Hallucinating distinctions (was New Jersey Dialects)

[Steve Kl.]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Barbara Need wrote:

> I associate davenport with a Peanuts cartoon from the 50s. Lucy
> claims to have shot someone behind the davenport "and if that's not
> fatal I don't know what is!" It is a term that I know and I know the
> referent for, but it seems alien to me: childhood Cleveland 1960s.

In our living room in the 70s we had a davenport. My parents now have a
couch. Davenport was once in my active vocabulary but I probably haven't
used it outside of this kind of discussion in over 20 years.