Undergraduate front-clipping (was 'mo=homo)

[Tom Kysilko]

At 3/5/2004 02:53 PM -0500, Laurence Horn wrote:
>I had thought 'za and 'rents were relatively recent undergraduate
>slang, but when we were discussing these as exceptions to
>generalizations on clipping last fall, one of my undergraduate
>students suspected, and then confirmed, that it was part of his
>father's active usage since the latter's undergraduate days.

 From my undergraduate days:
'za
'rents
'ner = dinner
'tail = cocktail
'hue = Goodhue (dormitory)
and while not as common as "libe"
'bary = library

All with the stressed syllable clipped.

These and many other terms were collected in a lexicon that was distributed
to freshmen (in 1966 anyway).  Entitled "Loosely Speaking", it ran to at
least 20 mimeographed pages.  Many of the usages had died out by the time I
got there, (I recall "hum" = all-purpose, often euphemistic, verb.  "They
were out there humming on the lawn."  "Let's hum a za."  Beautiful, but not
used in my time.) but I can swear that the above were all in active use
1966-1970.

   Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
   pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA