buy/by the poound

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

nearly 10,000 Google hits for "buy the pound"--surely a pun. It is the name 
of a store in Canada.

No hits for "bi the pound" ...

In a message dated 4/7/08 3:13:09 PM, gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU writes:


> Yeah, maybe I was being too generous, but I was thinking "Don't just buy 
> one
> cup, buy the whole pound" or something.
> 
> 
> On 4/7/08 1:00 PM, "Dennis R Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:
> 
> > I'm having trouble getting the ambiguity from the "the." "Buy a pound" and
> > "by the pound" seem pretty fixed to me.
> >
> > dInIs
> >
> > Matthew Gordon writes:
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
> >> Subject:      Re: Headlines roll by; heads will roll by
> >> -----------------------
> ------------------------------------------------------
> >> --
> >>
> >> On a related note, I was in a Dunkin Donuts this weekend and noticed a
> >> hand-written sign that read:
> >> "Whole bean coffee
> >> buy the pound
> >> $13.99"
> >> or something like that. The wording and layout made it ambiguous enough 
> that
> >> either 'buy' or 'by' was possible.
> >>
> >>
> >> On 4/7/08 11:57 AM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
> >>
> >>> NYTimes headline, today, columns 1-3, front page (New England Edition):
> >>>
> >>> When Foreigners by the Factory: 2 Towns, Opposite Paths.
> >>>
> >>> America for Sale: The Outsiders.
> >>>
> >>> Joel
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
> 




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