"Windy City" wrong in NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW(3-9-03)

[Michael Quinion]

Laurence Horn wrote:

> A book (perhaps with apposite illustrations) including the "Windy
> City" and "hot dog" follies and countless others, presented as a
> case of linguistic detective work, might be just the thing.  At
> least when a solid demonstration is offered in book form published
> by a major house, it's nothing to be sneezed at.  And consider, as
> another parallel, the wonderful and very well received recent
> compilation _Language Myths_, edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter
> Trudgill (Penguin, 1998).  So how about a book on false
> attributions--Barry?  Jerry?  anyone?

I'm in the final stages of preparing the MS for just this work, to be
published by Penguin. It will contain the Windy City and hot dog
stories, plus many others (with appropriate attributions of research,
of course).

I'm a little pessimistic about the effect it will have on rebutting
the mountains of misinformation out there on word origins. Geoff
Pullum's book hasn't greatly reduced the number of references to all
those Eskimo words for snow. But I share your hope that its existence
will at least provide a place to which doubters can be referred.


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>