Being pendantic

[Alice Faber]

Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 09:07:58 -0400, David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET> wrote:
>
>
>>In the thread "cubic VVV", "Mullins, Bill" wrote:
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>></pendant off>
>>
>>Google gives ~21,300 hits for "pendantic", many clearly in place of
>>"pedantic". Is it really possible to be properly pedantic while writing
>>pendantic, i wonder?
>
>
> On the alt.folklore.urban newsfroup, "pendant"/"pendantic"/"pendantry" is
> an intentional mipselling, used as an in-group shibboleth to maintain
> their borders from perpetual onslaughts of clue-deprived newbies. A good
> sociolinguistic study of these shibboleths by Lara Hopkins used to be
> online, but it's disappeared. AFU does provide some guidance on its
> official site, though: <http://tafkac.org/afu/guides/afu_language.html>.
>

If anyone's interested in this, let me know and I'll email Lara and ask
for a copy of this paper.


--
 =============================================================================
Alice Faber                                    faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                           tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                        fax (203) 865-8963