Prescriptive Linguists

[Wilson Gray]

"Five-pound sack" and not "five-pound bag"? I wonder where the
isogloss is. (Rhetorical. I don't really care.) I read "Cat's Cradle"
in the original Galaxy(?) magazine version so long ago that I have no
recollection as to whether Kurt, Jr., used "bag" or "sack."

The stranger thing is that, when I picture this kind of blivVt in my
mind, I see a sack. Unless it's actually a bag. :-)

-Wilson

On 1/31/08, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> Subject:      Re: Prescriptive Linguists
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >Oh, THAT! I know it as... well, various names, but the first I learned was
> >"blivet" ("blivit"?), possibly from MAD Magazine. Escher, our age's great
> >master of such, uses that diagram, or rather the principle, in many guises.
>
> I know Kurt Vonnegut's definition of "blivet" (from _Cat's Cradle_,
> IIRC): ten pounds of shit in a five-pound sack. Apparently this comes
> from military usage. I find it useful in my day job, more often than
> I would like.
>
> This is actually the first time I've seen the term applied to the
> optical-illusion three-pronged thingy (for which I never had a proper
> name).
>
> James Harbeck.
>
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