Dating of "mud flap"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Rousseauvian" beats "Rousseauan" hollow on Google too.

And "Slobbovian".... Oops, that doesn't work, does it ?

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: Dating of "mud flap"?
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>Thank you, AM. (The painter is not PPRuben or even PPRubin.)

No, he's Rubens. But what follows from that? Would you insist on
"monstrousity" rather than "monstrosity" because, after all, it's the
quality of being monstrous, not montros? If so, shouldn't we also
require "monsterous" rather than "montstrous"? And hence
"monsterousity"? What distinguishes this case from others in which
readjustment rules apply in word-formation, e.g. "Shavian" and, yes,
"Rubenesque"? Do you insist on "Platoic" rather than "Platonic" on
the grounds that we (in English) don't call him Platon? Saying that
the painter's name is "Rubens" is true but not necessarily sufficient.

L

>At 7/12/2005 12:03 PM, you wrote:
>>Well, yeah, since you mention it, "Rubensesque," which ain't that hard to
>>say, does call PPRubens to mind more readily than Rubenesque, which sounds
>>more like corned-beef-&-sauerkraut (even though spelled differently)!
>>AM


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