Beans, etc, PS: The Battle Hymn...

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:31 PM -0500 6/9/07, Jim Parish wrote:
>Laurence Horn wrote:
>>  Yup; that was the "pasta substitute" to which I referred (below).
>>  But I'd forgotten the second verse.
>
>Third verse, as I recall it:
>
>It rolled down the sidewalk
>And under a bush
>Before I could catch it
>My meatball was mush.
>
>(Hmm. Outside of this song, my memory tells me that "mush" rhyming
>with "bush" was a verb; the noun usually rhymed with "plush".)
>
Back to dialectology:  for me, "mush" as a verb can only rhyme with
"hush" (as in "Mush, you huskies").  As a noun (corn meal ___), I can
get it either as /m^S/ (as in "hush") or /mUS/ (as in "bush").  In
the verse above, it would have to be a noun, and the rhyme works with
no problem.  Curiously, the AHD recognizes only the /m^S/ for both.
On the other hand, it gives both /m^Si/ and /mUSi/ for "mushy".
Weird.

LH

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