A Texan jail

[James A. Landau]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article1171393.ece

Cahal Milmo "Texan jail awaits bankers accused of £11m fraud"
The Independent [191 Marsh Wall, London E14 9RS], July 11, 2006

The above headline sounds odd to American ears---we would say "a Texas jail" but "a Scottish gaol".  A "Texan jail" presumably is one where the guards drive Cadillacs and there is an oil well in the exercise yard (as opposed to a "Texas jail", which is on the top passenger deck of a steamboat).

Two further items of dialect interest:
"The Houston Federal Detention Centre is a place where no visitor to Texas would choose to linger. But in less than 72 hours, three Britons will enter its forbidding walls as the unlikely pawns in a battle to define American power over British citizens.

Lawyers for the three former bankers known as the NatWest Three confirmed yesterday that the men will complete on Thursday their fast-track extradition to America to face charges relating to an £11m fraud involving the collapsed US giant Enron."

I doubt that the Houston Detention facility is regularly referred to in print
as a "Centre", and I was under the impression that "NatWest Three" and similar names were restricted to the US (didn't they arise in the later stages of the Civil Rights Movement?)

**************************************************
Overheard at work, in reference to North Korea: "but if the UN decides to do something, China will outvote it".  The word should have been "veto".  I don't know if this should be classified as an eggcorn---this particular speaker is dumb enough not to know the difference.

The other day someone (Wilson Gray?) mentioned the eggcorn "meet market."  I would tend to classify this one not as an eggcorn but as a deliberate play on words.  It reminds me of the following circa-1980 conversation, in reference to a Jewish singles group:
"It'a a meat market"
"Yes, but it's a Kosher meat market"

      - Jim Landau

FREE THE DC 10!




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