starters (was: McMansions)

[Dennis R. Preston]

My favorite "starter" is "starter marriage."

dInIs

From:    Tom Kysilko <pds at VISI.COM>
: At 12/10/2003 11:46 AM -0500, Bethany K. Dumas wrote:

:: Does every region have <starter mansion>?

: The term I hear in MN is 'starter castle'.

Growing up in the 80s in Southern Maryland, 'McMansion' was used to describe
the huge houses going up at a huge rate, particularly around Potomac (on the
other side of DC), at the time. Part of the connotation, as i understood it,
was that they couldn't be "real" mansions, 'cause they didn't sit on more
than an acre or two of land and weren't surrounded by big trees. (Southern
Maryland was still largely agricultural at the time--since then it's started
to get its share of McMansions itself.)

I didn't hear 'starter mansion' until i was in Philadelphia for grad school.
This is the first i've run across 'starter castle', but i must admit that i
like it (for professionally completely non-defendable reasons :-] ).

David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
      Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
e-mail: preston at msu.edu
phone: (517) 432-3099