bath vs. bathe

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 03:01 PM 8/23/2002 +0100, Lynne wrote:


>A 75-year-old Englishman in one of my classes corrected me vehemently when
>I pronounced the sentence "Mother bathed the baby" as if they verb were
>'bathe' rather than 'bath'.  He insisted that you 'bathe' in the sea, but
>you 'bath' in a tub, and he made out to be telling me (the American) how to
>pronounce the language 'correctly'.  He turned to his 21-year-old
>classmates for support, and most looked at him like he was crazy--they say
>'bathe'.
>
>A few months later, my 70-something aunt (originally from western NY, but a
>50-year resident of Indiana) was over for a visit, and she told a story in
>which my grandmother 'bathed the baby'--pronounced like 'bath'.
>
>So, this suggested to me that the difference might be not so much
>regional/dialectal as it generational.
>
>However, dictionaries do treat this as a dialectal US/UK difference.  AHD4
>has no verb entry for 'bath'.  MW9 treats it as "British".
>NODE (UK) gives have-a-bath senses (note: Brits have a bath/shower/walk,
>rather than _taking_ one) of both 'bath' and 'bathe', and treats the 'bathe
>in the sea' sense as 'chiefly British'.
>
>Lynne
>
>Dr M Lynne Murphy
>Lecturer in Linguistics
>Acting Director, MA Applied Linguistics
>
>School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
>University of Sussex
>Falmer
>Brighton BN1 9QH
> From UK:  (01273) 678844  fax: (01273) 671320
>Outside UK: +44-1273-678844  fax: +44-1273-671320

Lynne's anecdote, plus the attestations by Lynn Short and others, would
suggest that 'bath' as a verb is indeed regional as well as
generational.  English and Scots-Irish forms that were carried to midland
America, and esp. Appalachia, have often been retained to the present
day.  Hence Lynne's 75-year-old man probably also represents a retention of
the older form that came to America but is no longer used by either his
grandchildren or most "modern" Americans.  I'll check for the verb form
here in SE Ohio.

As for the lack of the verbal meaning in the AHD, that just suggests that
dictionary makers (apart from DARE, of course) aren't in tune with (or
don't bother to check) rural, isolated, old-fashioned usages.  Remember
when, a few weeks back, I was chided for noting a usage that wasn't
sanctioned by "the dictionary"?  I can't even recall what the issue was,
but I had to assure the chider (no offense, whoever you are!) that the
usage was very real, despite what the "experts" said.