IV: it lives still

[Arnold Zwicky]

from the archives:

 Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 21:15:43 -0400
 From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
 Subject: Re: Halls of ivy, Ivy League
 In-Reply-To:
   <Pine.GSO.4.10.10003121530070.12726-100000 at mercury.cis.yale.edu>

 Let me also remind us that we had a detailed discussion not that long ago
 (July 1998, to be exact) of the obviously related "Ivy League", which I've
 also seen falsely etymologized--sometimes by my own undergraduates--as
 deriving from "IV League" (again from the numeral, rather than the feeding
 tube)...

from the 5 october 2002 Palo Alto Daily News, a garden column
(provided by a service, i think, not written locally) by lee reich,
"Getting the creeps", about virginia creeper:

    In fact, the word "ivy" lacks precise botanical meaning,
  and is applied to any number of vining plants.  Virginia creeper
  has also been called "ivy" - "American ivy," by the British.
  But it's neither ivy nor Virginia creeper that led to the name
  "Ivy League."  That name came about because there were originally
  only four Ivy League colleges, and "four" in Roman numerals is IV.

it lives still.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)