Earliest Reference to "Ghoti"

Wed Dec 13 14:32:10 UTC 2006

I've heard the same thing -- from a professor of historical linguistics,
I believe.  But he didn't document it.

Joanne

On 13 Dec 2006, at 5:27, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> If it's of any interest to anybody, my seventh-grade English teacher, Mr. Walsh, attributed "ghoti" to Shaw in 1959 or '60.
>
>   Shaw's pointy beard may have helped the attribution along- preconsciously, of course.
>
>   JL
>
> Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
> Subject: Re: Earliest Reference to "Ghoti"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 12/12/06, Laurence Horn wrote:
> > I remember hearing a no doubt ghoti-y tale that the observation was
> > due to G. B. Shaw. A little searching indicates that it is a
> > widespread canard (esp. good on toast). See e.g.
> > http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwhat04.html
> > (In this piece, Jim Scobbie doesn't attempt to date the "ghoti" fish-tale.)
>
> For further on this, see my alt.usage.english/sci.lang post from June 2004:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/msg/5501afa30de85a88
>
> Executive summary: "ghoti" shows up unattributed in 1938 (1937 thanks
> to Fred's new cite), then directly attributed to Daniel Jones in 1943,
> then vaguely attributed to G.B. Shaw in 1946 by the canard-alicious
> Mario Pei (who perhaps was getting Jones and Shaw confused).
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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