hawk/hock

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

I can confirm Dennis' prediction. I am a degenerate conflater of low back vowels (though my soul may be salvaged by my maintenance of the pen/pin distinction). I don't think I've ever seen 'hawk' in the meaning of  "sell" written. If I had heard someone using it, I would have guessed the intended form was 'hock'.
Both of these words are pretty rare (not the bird sense, of course) and the semantic similarity is pretty strong.

-----Original Message-----
From:   Dennis R. Preston [mailto:preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU]
Sent:   Thu 7/11/2002 6:41 AM
To:     ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Cc:	
Subject:             Re: hawk/hock

Nope! No confusion here in phonology or lexicon. I have (at least)
"hawk" (v.) 1. to peddle aggressively, 2. to attend to or watch
carefully (as in "ball-hawk" in hoops), and 3. a sport using birds
(called "falconry" by the elite).

None of these are related to "hock," but it's easy to see how the
morally inadequate vowel conflaters among use might see a
relationship between the first verb "hawk" and "hock."

dInIs