"Expleetive"

[Dennis R. Preston]

LH,

Now that I reflect further, I guess it is such an infrequent lexical
item with me that I am lucky to have any intuitions at all about it.
They both sound posh, and I had no Grundy experience (with this item).

dInIs

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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: "Expleetive"
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>
>At 10:05 AM -0400 4/6/07, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>>LH,
>>
>>Do you really reckon the antepenult is the rarer of the two
>>pronunciations of "exquisite"?
>
>Yes
>
>>Which do you take to be the posher"?
>
>The antepenult.  Us ordinary folks grew up saying "exQUISite" until
>Mrs. Grundy beat it out of us.
>
>>(Ignoring a sort of inherent pseudo-poshness for the item itself.)
>
>Well, there is that.
>
>LH
>>
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>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>>Subject:      Re: "Expleetive"
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>At 11:50 PM -0400 4/5/07, James Harbeck wrote:
>>>>That was how I said it when I was a kid. "Expleetive deleeted"
>>>>sounded pretty good to me. But then my parents corrected me (a few
>>>>times, because I didn't like the sound of the "proper" pronunication).
>>>>
>>>>It's not unreasonable to think it might be pronounced that way, after
>>>>all. The "ex" is a prefix of the sort that often goes unstressed. Add
>>>>to that the fact that in the Latin the e is long. And in the OED, the
>>>>"expleetive" translation is also listed (in second spot).
>>>>
>>>Maybe "exPLEEtive" sounds too much like "exCREEtive".
>>>
>>>As far as the unstressed "ex", that also comes up in the variation
>>>between "EXquisite" and "exQUISite"; even AHD4, which only gives the
>>>antepenult variant for "expletive", gives both for "exquisite",
>>>although it "favors" the antepenult version (which I'd wager is
>>>considerably the rarer of the two in actual usage).
>>>
>>>LH
>>>
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