More on "punk"

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Umliterature" it is, but the stress must be on the first syllable or I won't say it.

The existence of "umfriend" shows that "um-" is one of the few genuine, diphonemic, English-derived prefixes in a thousand years.

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: More on "punk"
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At 3:11 PM -0700 6/14/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Luckily for us the historicity of MSL doesn't matter. Its date is
>all that counts.
>
>"Spunk" is not only still current in Britain; it now has some U.S.
>currency as well. In a certain genre of, um, literature, anyway.
>
>Howzabout we drop the commas and coin the term "um literature," with
>the stress on "um" ?
>
>JL

Or maybe just "umliterature" sansspace, as in "umfriend"? (The
latter, variously defined as 'A sexual relationship of dubious
standing or a concealed intimate relationship, such as, "This is
Bridget, my.... um.... friend"' has 580 google hits.)

larry

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