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

[Jonathan Lighter]

When my wife did botanical research in the '60s, she was instructed that the stuff that grows plants must always be called "soil."  This was not to impress customers.  It was because "dirt" has the salient undesirable meaning of "filth." ("Soil" and "filth" are also related, but the connection does not come to mind as readily.)

Because of its greater specificity, "soil" became a required technical term.

Idiomatically, one may live "close to the soil," but not to the "dirt."

JL

Ed Keer <edkeer at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Ed Keer
Subject: Re: Collegiate "geek" in the '70s (was Re: Synonymy avoidance)
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Also dirt and soil among landscapers. (Soil being the
term for the more expensive variant and hence used
with clients.)

Ed
--- Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> Like "pail" and "bucket."
>
> JL
>
> Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
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> 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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