Another Bushism

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Tue, 5 Mar 2002  9:20:41 AM Eastern Standard Time, James Smith <jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM> writes:

> When someone gets clobbered or skunked, it's a rout!
>
> My desk Webster's gives 'rout out' as 'to expel by
> force'.  Other meanings of 'rout' include to drive
> out, to defeat decisively.  Mr. Bush's usage seems
> mundanely mainstream.

A quick search on Google shows 118,000 hits on "root out".  Four of the first ten are "root out corruption".

There are 4,510 hits on "rout out".  Seven of the first ten are from President Bush.  The first hit is "rout out rudeness".

There are 16,200 hits on "route out" but of the first 20 most are noun + prepositional phrase, i.e. "the route out of ...".

My guess is that "root out" is the original verb phrase, and that "rout out" developed due to the confusion caused by the existence of the word "route" which can be pronounced either /root/ or /rout/.  In any case, Bush did NOT invent "rout out".  Is there a regional variation in the pronunciation of "route", and if so which variation would Bush be more likely to use?

    - Jim Landau  (who uses /rout/)