Doing the Laundry

[Grant Barrett]

I wouldn't be too sure about its provenance. It's been floating
around the Internet since at least 1984 in several forms. Google
Groups has it from January of that year:

http://groups.google.com/group/net.general/msg/5d3591473153ee4c

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
http://www.doubletongued.org/

The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English (May 2006, McGraw-Hill)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071458042/

On Jul 25, 2006, at 10:10, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> I got this from a niece, presumably copied exactly from an old
> scrapbook of advice to young'uns.  It's full of wonderful regional
> pronunciation-spellings (boilin, hole=whole, lie=lye, britches,
> pore=pour, smooth=smoothe, and of course wrench=rinse).  But
> "pert" (in "if wind is pert") puzzles me.  I'm familiar with "pert
> near"=pretty near; but "pert" as an adjective = ?  Anything in DARE?
>
> P.S.   My  grandmothers used to follow this "recipe" outdoors, and
> my mother did much the same indoors!

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