oops

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, since there's "pie a la MODE," I vote for "mode" as the
formerly-understood noun.

-Wilson

On 5/10/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      oops
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:18 PM -0400 5/10/06, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>Greetings again from Santorini. From various beach restaurants here:
> >>...
> >>SCALLOPINE MEXICAN WOMAN
> >>FILET BEEF MEXICAN WOMAN
> >>HAMBURGER MEXICAN WOMAN--One restaurant had all three of these.
> >>"Mexican Woman"??
> >>
> >This is a lovely eggcorn--a (mis)translation of "alla mexicana" or "à
> >la mexicaine" or some such cognate, I'd wager.  The feminine ending
> >is of course originally for an adjective modifying the feminine noun
> >"style", but it's been reanalyzed as if the "Mexicana" were a
> >feminine noun.
> >
> Of course the reference to "style" is mistaken; that's a masculine
> noun.  The understood nominal modified by "mexicaine", "française",
> etc. must be something like "mode", "manière", or "façon".  My bad.
> (This doesn't affect the general diagnosis of Barry's menu items
> above.)
>
> LH
>
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