'touch wood' was: Re: the server is hallucinating

Kelly Vincent kpvincent at HOTMAIL.COM
Fri Mar 15 12:24:09 UTC 2002


I do, too. I don't think I ever heard 'touch wood' until I moved to Glasgow
from Oklahoma, and now that's all I hear. And here they actually do just
lightly touch wood, whereas we always knocked on it a couple times.

Kelly

>I associate 'touch wood' more with UK and 'knock on wood' with the US.  but
>there's no reason to trust my associations!
>
>Lynne
>
>--On Wednesday, March 13, 2002 8:18 am -0800 "A. Maberry"
><maberry at U.WASHINGTON.EDU> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Alice Faber wrote:
>>>
>>> > Is there
>>> > regional variation?
>>>
>>>Not that I'm aware of. For what it's worth, I'm from the NY area.
>>>--
>>
>>I've heard "touch wood" but more often "knock on wood" out here in the
>>PNW.
>>
>>allen
>>maberry at u.washington.edu
>
>
>
>Dr M Lynne Murphy
>Lecturer in Linguistics
>Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
>School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
>University of Sussex
>Brighton BN1 9QH
>UK
>
>phone +44-(0)1273-678844
>fax   +44-(0)1273-671320




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