"gook" (rhymes with "book")

[Jonathan Lighter]

Who says "mook" > "Mookie" ?

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: "gook" (rhymes with "book")
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At 7:48 PM -0500 3/18/05, sagehen wrote:
>Leaving aside "gook" and all the other /-oo-/ words -- like roof & root --
>that can go either way, I find that /k/ seems to be the most U-inspiring
>letter of the alphabet. I can come up off the top of my head with about 40
>/-oo-/ words that sound the vowel as in "food." Only one of them ("spook")
>has a /k/.

How about "kook"? Maybe that gets an /u/ because it derives (by
clipping) from "kookie". "Mook" (short for "Mookie", proper name) is
certainly so analyzable.

Larry


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