Birth of a nova--not?

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:54 AM +0100 1/21/06, Chris Waigl wrote:
>On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:17:09 -0500, Benjamin Zimmer typed:
>
>>  Here's a pertinent example from Robin Pemantle:
>>
>>    Ollie!
>>
>>    Higgelgate, Piggelgate,
>>      Oliver, Oliver
>>      cleaned out his files to
>>      clean up his act
>>    letting him substitute
>>      somewhat revisionist
>>      verisimilitude
>>      after the fact.               -RP (1987)
>>
>>  http://www.math.upenn.edu/~pemantle/Higgeldy.html
>
>Is this a thread tie? Did I miss something?

well, it's an oblique tie.  The earlier discussion hinged on the
observation that "verisimilitude" (whatever its semantic relation to
truthiness) isn't all that hard to assign a stress contour to, since
after all it's just a standard double dactyl, which Ben and I have
been taking to illustrate by locating various double dactyls (the
poems) that feature it as the line (Verse 2, Line 2) that by rule
must consist of a single double-dactylic word, like "verisimilitude"
or "philoprogenitive".  Unfortunately (or fortunately),
"hyperphiloprogenitive" has two feet too many.

L

>
>Higgeldy Piggeldy
>   Philip of Macedon
>   cursed Alexander, his
>   famous papoose,
>"Why should I try to be
>   philoprogenitive?
>   everyone thinks that his
>   father was Zeus!"              (Keith Peterson, 19??)
><http://www.math.upenn.edu/~pemantle/higgeldy/alexander>
>
>Chris Waigl
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org