celebutard

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 6/8/07, ddr11 <ddr11 at uvic.ca> wrote:
>
> I'm all, does the folk spelling "celebuty" have anything to do with it?
>
> It's a googlewhack in the singular, but I've totally seen undergrads write
> it.  Google turns up an alternate spelling "celebut".
>
> Seven hits for the plural "celebuties", three for "celebutys", googlewhack
> for "celebuts".
>
> There's some wiggle room in popular phonology between /yu/ and /ri ~ li/,
> viz. "nucular", "ambliance", and so on.

The medial "-u-" /yu/ ultimately derives from the original blend
"celebutante" ("celebrity" +
"debutante"), which in turn spawned various secondary celebu-blends.
The full history is here:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004066.html


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org