cacotopia

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Kigmy" ? "Ruler of the Pigmies" ?

  JL



  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: cacotopia
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The OED has both pronunciations, giving pride of place to YOU-r at n@s.
As fate would have it, I learned the Greek word long before I ever
heard anyone pronounce the name of the planet, though, of course, I
had seen it in print.

Hey! What's up with this kigmy ["an expression of hostility from an
unexpected source"], Charlie? You're my home boy! "One of them good
folk who come from home," as the old recitation has it. As the company
clerk once put it as he forged the absent CO's signature on my
application for a three-day pass, "WTF? You from Texas, too." (He was
from Gilmer, a hoot and a holler to the NW of Marshall.) He had my
back. You're supposed to have my back, too!

-Wilson ;-)

On 10/16/06, Charles Doyle 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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