De-gaying

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:34 PM -0800 3/7/04, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>?Ahh...Never having done that, I didn't know there was an innovative form. I
>agree delouse is correct (or at least far better than) delice, though I've
>often wondered if singulars like louse and bacterium are going to die out.
>BB

Could be, although I think the causes will be different.  In the
former, the pressure is homonymy/polysemy avoidance based on the more
frequent slang extension of  "louse", sort of the way "bitch" has
been displaced for female dogs, although the taboo avoidance in the
"bitch" case is obviously a stronger force.  With "bacteria", I think
it's the same process by which "alumni" and "criteria" being
reinterpreted as singulars, displacing the original Classical
singular.

As for "de-rice", the innovator was my (non-linguist) wife, and the
object was my daughter--this was a while ago, as the same
daughter--now home on college break--has been just fine with her rice
distribution for quite some time.

larry horn

>  >-----Original Message-----
>>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]
>>On Behalf Of Laurence Horn
>
>>
>>>?Delice or derice a child's hair?...BB
>>
>>For me, the former is only "de-louse", and that's a
>>lexicalized version of what "de-rice" is an innovative version of.