Dating of "mud flap"?

[Joel S. Berson]

So we can expect a back-formation here? "a burlesque show featuring
Rubenesque entertainers, so-called because amply-proportioned women were
often chosen as models by the painter Peter Paul Ruben"?

At 7/12/2005 03:09 PM, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Dating of "mud flap"?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >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