DOPE as a college student slang term, 1

[David Bowie]

From:    Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> At 9:42 AM -0500 3/8/05, David Bowie wrote:

>>*But*--why in the world would such homonymy create discord? I mean, if
>>two words have closely related but different meanings, i can see how
>>they'd interfere ('cleave' and 'cleave', to take an extreme example, or
>>even 'dope' /soft drink/ and 'dope' /drugs/, since they're both
>>consumables), but language seems to do fine with hononyms that mean very
>>different things (as in 'lead' /give direction/ and 'lead' /metal/,

> maybe "cape" (promontory vs. cloak) is a better example, since the
> two "lead"s are only homographs, not homonyms

Sorry, you're right, i messed up--i got so carried away with everything
else being homographic that i wrote 'lead' /give direction/ when i
*should* have written 'led' /gave direction/, which is homophonic but
not homographic with 'lead' /metal/.

<snip>

--
David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.