"open o" loss

[Neal Whitman]

Justin Busch at Semantic Compositions had a funny post about precisely this
pair of iffy homophones:
http://semanticcompositions.typepad.com/index/2006/07/homonyms_bad_fo.html.
He quotes a Chicago Tribune article:

An Apple spokeswoman, Natalie Kerris, said iPods have a failure rate of less
than 5 percent, which she said is "fairly low" compared with other consumer
electronics. "The vast majority of our customers are extremely happy with
their iPods," she said, adding that an iPod is designed to last four years.

He was amazed a corporate spokesperson would make such a straightforward
declaration about a product's expected lifespan. Later, Kerris said ...
well, you can see where this is going.

Neal Whitman
Email: nwhitman at ameritech.net
Blog: http://literalminded.wordpress.com
Webpage: http://literalmindedlinguistics.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Doyle" <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 8:14 AM
Subject: "open o" loss


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      "open o" loss
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Disregarding the traditional dialect of the local area, the University of
> Georgia's gymnastics team is sporting the slogan "Back 4 more" as it
> enters the NCAA meet this weekend, hoping to win its fourth consecutive
> national championship.
>
> (The pun--which was not at first obvious to me--merges "four" and "for.")
>
> --Charlie
> _____________________________________________________________
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