IV: it lives still

[Laurence Horn]

Oh my goodness.  On it creeps.  Of course I now (after my 5th round
of chemo) have a very different association with the "IV league"...

larry

At 1:19 PM -0700 10/5/02, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>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
>
>  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)