wheel barrels?

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 11, 2004, at 11:17 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: wheel barrels?
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>
> At 10:41 AM -0400 8/11/04, Thomas Paikeday wrote:
>> Bethany,
>>
>> FWIW, here is my explanation of why you hear "wheel barrow" as "wheel
>> barrel":
>>
>> The "l" sound in that position is rounded, so is "w". The "-ow"/"-el"
>> confusion, I believe, is borne out in similar phonetic contexts
>> including
>> "-al", "-il", "-ol", -"ul", and "-yl" if someone will supply examples
>> in
>> support of or against this claim by a non-phonetician.
>>
>> TOM PAIKEDAY
>> www.paikeday.net
>
> Tom, I'm not sure I buy this, however persuasive the phonetic
> argumentation.
>
> My wife purchased a wheelbarrow earlier this summer and since then
> has referred to it consistently as a wheelbarrel.  (This surprised me
> because she's from Greenwich, CT and doesn't have all that many
> "folk" pronunciations in her dialect.)  I just checked and she
> confirmed that she (like others who have commented) would always
> *spell* it as "wheelbarrow" but usually *pronounces* it as
> wheelbarrel.  She claims (essentially like Tom) that it's "easier to
> say" as 'barrel", but when I grilled her on whether she'd say "bow
> and arrel" because it's easier than saying "bow and arrow", she
> acknowledged she'd be extremely unlikely to do so.  So I think the
> folk etymological link with "barrel" is crucial in the former case,
> whatever the phonetic motivation.
>
> Larry
>

FWIW, in my "wheelbarrel" days, I often wondered how the thing got its
name, given that a wheelbarrel in no way resembles a wheeled barrel.

-Wilson