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

[Ed Keer]

Also dirt and soil among landscapers. (Soil being the
term for the more expensive variant and hence used
with clients.)

Ed
--- Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
> 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)
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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