Not in DARE?

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Sleep" may well be a reification of the old phrase, "Rub the sleep from your eyes" = "to rub your eyes upon awakening."  It's what both my grandparents (b. NYC 1880s) called the stuff.  My wife's parents (N.Y. State) used "sleepers" from at least the 1930's.

JL


"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: Not in DARE?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are some alternatives to "cat butter": apparently "sleep" is the most
popular. Note "kitty". I like "eye shit" or "eye booger" myself.

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/staticmaps/q_82.html

I imagine that this "sleep" is originally a back-formation from a
figurative expression maybe?

-- Doug Wilson

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com