Hypercorrections win out?

[Wilson Gray]

Heading from a slice of spam:

"Your love _muscle_!"

I first heard this term in 1960 from William Loges [loGIs], a white
barracks-mate from Trenton, NJ. But, when I tried to use it myself, he
corrected me, explaining that the term was "love _muzzle_" and not
"love _muscle_." AFAIK, Bill is the last, living native-speaker to
insist upon "muzzle," if not also the first.

In like manner, Gregory McCurdy, of "How ADJ is that?!" fame, in 1961
explained to me that my use of "scarf" in the sense of "eat
(heartily)" was a hypercorrected pronunciation of "scoff," with the
same meaning, adding that it was probably based upon E-scoff-ier.

At the time, my reaction was, "You ain't talkin' to *me*!" (i.e., "You
can not be serious!"). Since then, I've come to believe that he was
right. Ain't *that* a bitch?! :-)

Of course, I used the pronunciation, "scarf," only when talking to
white people like Greg. Otherwise, I used "scoff," like the rest of
the brothers. Clearly, though, I had "scarf" and not "scoff" as,
loosely speaking, my underlying representation, or I would not have
replaced "scoff" with "scarf."

IAC, just as I've seen only "love _muscle_" in print, so also have I
seen only "scarf" in print, in the relevant meaning, in contemporary
writing. Both are, in my experience, quite rare.

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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