Doing the Laundry

[Wilson Gray]

Not to mention that, in those days, a woman who didn't know how to
wash clothes *before* she got married would have found herself in a
world of hurt, unless she had enough money to pay a washerwoman and
her husband was both henpecked enough and wealthy enough to allow her
to waste money like that.

-Wilson

On 7/25/06, Grant Barrett <gbarrett at worldnewyork.org> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
> Subject:      Re: Doing the Laundry
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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--
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have
found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be
imposed upon them.

Frederick Douglass

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