"Windy City" and Whacker Drive

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Dec 10 19:27:30 UTC 2002


At 8:41 AM -0800 12/10/02, Peter Richardson wrote:
>Nice to know about all those friendly people in Chicago. But is the
>mistake in the spelling/pronunciation of Wacker Drive...
>
>(from Barry:)
>I mean, downtown Chicago is very, very unique. I mean, in that
>you've got layers, you got levels. I mean, like, I know they're about to
>open--re-open lower Whacker Drive, which is a great name.
>
>...likely to be a hypercorrection because of our old friend wh-/w-? Or has
>the street been renamed to reflect a sudden increase in urban assaults?
>
I was thinking of a less violent, more off-color (re)interpretation.
Of course on the reading I had in mind, one would have to be
particularly wary of distracted drivers around Whacker.  (Driving
while operating a handheld cell-phone is bad enough...)

Larry



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