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

[Frank Abate]

What Larry H says below in response to Barry P's lament is right on.  A book
skewering false etyms would help.  It would NOT stop people -- even some
smart and fairly well-informed people -- from repeating etymythologies.
That is a vain hope.  They will continue to appear, and in "major" sources,
forever.  If the NYT (now) prints typos and various language gaffes nearly
every day, then there is little reason to imagine that false etyms will stop
appearing in print, there or elsewhere.  Ignorance of etymology knows no
bounds, and practically nobody cares about it, esp. if the etymythology
makes a good story and fills some lines.

The ideal false-etymology book would include much of Barry's original
research, with a great deal from Fred S, too, and would be edited by the
likes of Jerry Cohen.  It would be published, ideally, by a major dict
publisher.  It would be mentioned, ideally, after it came out, by Safire in
his "Gifts of Gab" column, which runs every Dec, before the holiday shopping
rush.  It would then sell a few thousand copies (if decently promoted,
beyond sending Safire a copy), and thereafter linger on some bookstore
shelves for years, selling in dribs and drabs.  It would then quietly be
pulled out of print, and die peacefully, remaining in evidence only on
library shelves.

Sorry, but I am in cynical mode today.

Frank Abate


At 6:45 PM -0500 3/10/03, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>    Could someone write on my behalf to the NEW YORK TIMES?  The NEW
>YORK SUN?  How many years must this go on?  My work was/is in the
>WALL STREET JOURNAL, the Straight Dope web site, World Wide Words
>web site, the Weather Doctor's web site, and the USA TODAY weather
>guy's web site.  And, especially, here on the American Dialect
>Society site.  MUST THIS HAPPEN EVERY DAY????

It does seem to happen every day, to Barry and in a sense to all of
us.  If Barry weren't so diligent about turning up these cites, it
would be less painful, I'm sure.  But there must have been almost as
many references to the umpteen words for snow in Eskimo before Geoff
Pullum published his book _The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, and
other irreverent essays on the study of language_ (U. of Chicago
Press, 1991).  I'm not sure the appearance of the book has made a
sizable dent in the citation practice, but at least when it happens
now there's a place to refer culprits to for enlightenment.  (I just
did so to our Unitarian minister, and she seems pleased to have been
set straight on the subject.)  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?

larry