spelling FISH

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Wed Jan 3 05:28:42 UTC 2007


as an offshoot of my Language Log postings on the randomness of the
number 17 (especially at princeton), i was offered this wonderful
report from a member of the class of '93 at princeton:

Begin forwarded message:

> During my time at Princeton, I was in the Band, which had a rare
> and fanatical devotion to randomness. But we never embraced "17" as
> we should. Our cheer went like this:
>
> Gimme an 'R'! ('R!')
> Gimme an 'A'! ('A!')
> Gimme an 'N'! ('N!')
> Gimme a 'D'! ('D!')
> Gimme an 'O'! ('O!')
> Gimme an 'M'! ('M!')
> What's that spell? ('FISH!')

i say it's ghoti, and i say the hell with it.

arnold

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