Solecism? Or SOTA?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Fortunately none of the six were present.

JL

"Rex W. Stocklin" <stocklin at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Rex W. Stocklin"
Subject: Re: Solecism? Or SOTA?
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At 1:40 PM -0400 5/9/05, Laurence Horn wrote:

>At 8:56 AM -0700 5/9/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> >Overheard yesterday on an airliner. The primary speaker was an
>African-American woman, about 40, who was flying to L.A.:
>>
>>"Oh, I have sextuplets. Three boys and three girls."
>>
>>"Sextuplets? My, oh my! They were all born at once?"
> >
> >"Oh, no! They were born at different times! But there are six of them!"
>>
>
>Well, technically, n-tuplets are all born at different times,
>although as part of the same macro-event. Presumably this trivial
>seriatim reading was not intended here.

Perhaps she was a meanin' that she had tuplets of whatever
classification, but ALL on account of that there sex there. ;-)

If there were 6 screaming imps on MY flight, why...I'm afraid they'd
become extuplets. ;-)


Never discounting the obvious amongst the pedestrians,
Lexy Rexy,
Fishers


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