cacotopia

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Mon Oct 16 22:35:39 UTC 2006


Just for the linguistic record, I first heard the stupid Uranus pun in NYC in 1969. I mentioned "Uranus" in a space context, and Mr. Interlocutor said, "You leave my anus out of this."

  That's when I adopted "Oorahnus."

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: cacotopia
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, Wilson--

Who SAYS _Uranus_ "should be" pronounced with stress on the initial syllable?? I had never heard such a pronuniation (during half a century or so) until the planet became big in the news a few years back, when journalists and school-teachers got all embarrassed about folks' anuses.

Besides, we would still have the "urine" jokes . . . .

--Charlie
________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 15:31:29 -0400
>From: Wilson Gray
>Subject: Re: cacotopia
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>If not for the tradition of dealing with Greek by way of Latin in English letters, the two words would be spelled "Outopie" and "Eutopie." And Uranus would be spelled "Ouranos," saving us or, at least, saving me, from all those asinine puns based on mis-stressing "Uranus" as "y at -RAY-n@s," when it should be "YOU-r at n@s."
>
>-Wilson

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