Geoduck (1882)

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 11/7/02 12:21:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:

> Does anyone know how this tasty specimen got to be spelled "geoduck"
>  while being pronounced "gooeyduck"?

No, but maybe you could tell me how a river in Pennsylvania whose name is
pronounced /'yuhk @ gein ee/ (that's a hard g) (name rhymes with "Allegheny")
came to be spelled as "Youghiogheny".  George Washington was about the first
English speaker to come anywhere near the Youghiogheny valley, and by then
English had for centuries given up creating new spellings with "ough"---and
no other English spelling uses "ough" for /uck/

       - Jim Landau.