Collegiate "geek" in the '70s (was Re: Synonymy avoidance)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Like "pail" and "bucket."

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: Collegiate "geek" in the '70s (was Re: Synonymy avoidance)
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On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 11:13:14 -0500, Dennis R. Preston

wrote:

>The "exact synonymy" rule surely applies to varieties, not languages.
>"Ya'll" and "you guys" appear to be exact synonyms in the fiction
>called "English," but they don't co-exist in one brain (except for
>bidialectal speakers), although bidialectal speakers are quick to
>begin to make distinctions, as I do now for "greazy" and "greasy."
>"Greazy" is really greasy, "greasy" is lightly and delicately oiled.

Didn't Labov have an anecdote about one of his New York informants
pointing out her small v[eys]es and large v[ahz]es? Regional variants
that ostensibly "mean the same thing" can always be reintensionalized (as
the semanticists might say) to mean different things within one speaker's
dialect.


--Ben Zimmer


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