Maslow's grea t quotation

Dennis Preston preston at MSU.EDU
Sat Jun 23 13:51:51 UTC 2007


There is no evidence that the Polish word for butter and the root of
the name Maslow(ski) are etymologically connected. Please see my
earlier message; you are mostly OK here, but remember that final
Polish "w" is devoiced, and the name would end in (something like)
"off."

dInIs


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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Laurence Urdang <urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET>
>Subject:      Re: Maslow's grea              t quotation
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Yes, maslo is Polish for 'butter.'  It is pronounced something like
>"mass woe": the "l" is so-called "dark," hence pronounced like an
>English "w"; there is no "w" at the end, for that would make it
>"mass love," "w" being pronounced (as in most Slavic and some
>Germanic languages) as "v."  The second vowel is more like "aw" than
>the "o" in "woe."
>   Of course God only knows what happens when the spelling reaches
>American hands.
>   Larry
>
>RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
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>Poster: RonButters at AOL.COM
>Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20=A0=20=A0=20=A0=20[ADS-L]=20Maslow's=20grea?
>= =?ISO-8859-1?Q?t=20quotation?=
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Is "Maslow" the Polish word for 'butter'?
>
>In a message dated 5/24/07 1:38:30 PM, goranson at DUKE.EDU writes:
>
>
>>  >> According to the staggeringly informative Yale Book of Quotations, the
>>  >> quotation is the following:
>>  >>
>>  >> It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat=20
>>  everything
>>  >> as if it were a nail.
>>  >>=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissa=
>nce ch. 2
>>  >> (1966)
>>  >>
>>  >> Fred Shapiro
>>=20
>>  Small comments. FWIW, I looked for earlier citations, but found none. The
>>  sentence (p.15-16) begins "I imagine it is tempting...." I found no=20
>>  indication
>>  in the book (acknowledgements, notes, etc.) that he is consciously quoting
>>  someone earlier. Elsewhere he uses quotation marks relatively frequently.=20
>>  The
>>  text above this mentions an automatic car washing machine that is quite
>>  good at
>>  that job. "But it could do _only_ that, and everything else that got into=20
>>  its
>>  clutches was treated as if it were an automobile to be washed." The senten=
>ce
>>  following our quotation: "In a word, I had either to give up my questions,=
>=20
>>  or
>>  else to invent new ways of answering them." I heard Maslow speak
>>  decades ago at
>>  Brandeis; an estimable man, I think.
>>=20
>>  Stephen Goranson
>>  http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
>>=20
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
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>>=20
>>=20
>
>
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA

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