"slang" and "informal" as dict labels [WAS: shirty?]

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:52 AM -0500 2/21/03, James A. Landau wrote:
>In a message dated 2/20/03 6:08:24 PM Eastern Standard Time, dave at WILTON.NET
>writes:
>
>>  The hockey team is named after the Jersey Devil of local legend:
>>   http://www.newjerseydevils.com/2003/community/legend.html
>
>Shows you how much I don't know about hockey, that I had no idea of the
>history of the Devils.
>
>However, "of local legend" is dubious, because the Devils play in the
>trans-Hudson area of suburban New York City (their stadium, by the way, is in
>a geological area known as the "Jersey Meadows", not "New Jerseay Meadows",
>hence the name "Meadowlands").  The Jersey Devil legend is mostly in South
>Jersey.  People who live in the area around the Jersey Meadows are just as
>likely to know about Bigfoot as they are to know about the Jersey Devil.
>
>Apparently some PR person didn't realize the difference between North Jersey
>and South Jersey.

So they should have called them The New Jersey Chemical Plants?  The
North Jersey Oil Refineries?  The Jersey Girls (after the Springsteen
song, once it was written)?  I think they did as well as they could.

>A note on some team names:
>
>So the Lakers originally came from Salt Lake City?

No, there was a short-lived franchise in SLC before the Jazz called
the Stars, if memory serves.  That may have been in the ABA (American
Basketball Association), I can't rightly remember.

>I always assumed that the
>name either was derived from "LA" as the abbreviation for Los Angeles (a la
>Philadelphia Phillies) or that the owner of the team was Sir Freddy Laker .

The Lakers hail from Minneapolis, in Minnesota, land of 10,000 or so
lakes.  There are a couple in L.A. to be sure--Silver Lake, Echo
Lake.  But not enough so's you'd notice.

>
>A generation ago someone posed to me the following trivia question: name the
>three teams whose team name does not end in the letter "s".

This wouldn't work now.  There are many such teams (the Miami Heat
has been playing in the NBA alongside the Jazz and Lakers for many
years now, as has the Orlando Magic), but mostly from minor
sports--the Chicago Fire is one of the cleverer ones.  Singular or
mass noun nicknames were trendy for a while.  I'm sure Frank or
someone else can come up with a comprehensive list.

>The first two
>are, of course, the Red Sox and the White Sox.  The third was, if I remember
>correctly, the Jazz (and is the obvious guess correct that they originated in
>New Orleans?)
>
Yes, they did.  Now there's another team there, the New Orleans
Hornets (just moved from Charlotte this year).  At least we don't
hear the name and think "New Orleans Hornets?  Aren't hornets
associated with Charlotte, NC?"  In fact the team did play at "the
Hive" in Charlotte, but there's no other well-known association, at
least not well known to me.

larry