Horne

[Wilson Gray]

But he's finally realized that mere memory is basically worthless to
the pros.:-) Memory is only for fee-U-N, to use another of my mother's
old slang phrases. (I wonder why that isn't "F-U-fun," like the later
"T-I-'tis." Of course, "tee-I-S" would be non-distinct from "T-I-S.")

BTW, a _Stetson_ hat is a "Stutson," as in this verse from an old R&B tune:

Then he grabbed his [st^ts at n] hat
And fleed the scene

I'm pretty sure that "fleed" is a nonce-form inspired by the
all-too-well-known "(... captured while attempting to) _flee the
scene_" and such, though it's possible that there were people who used
it seriously and I simply happened not to know any of them. My
North-Carolina relatives seriously use "JAY pan" for "Japan" and I
would never have thought that anyone would use that pronunciation
except as a joke.

-Wilson

On 2/3/08, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Horne
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Feb 3, 2008 1:01 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Well, to tell it like it T-I-tis, they both seem fairly trivial to me.
> > I prefer Major. Either I already know the term because everybody knew
> > it or I think that he's wrong or the term, if it existed, was peculiar
> > to New York and I have no opinion.
> [snip]
>
> Just in case there's any confusion, Wilson is responding to these two
> articles by Eliot Horne (which I emailed him):
>
> "For Cool Cats and Far-Out Chicks", NYT Sunday Magazine, Aug. 18, 1957, p. 14
> "The Words for the Music", NYT Sunday Magazine, June 25, 1961, p. 39
>
> Is Horne's 1963 _Hiptionary_, which these word-lists presumably fed
> into, known to anyone here? It doesn't show up as cited in the OED, so
> that doesn't bode well for its  potential for antedating and such.
> Still, the "good lookin' out" in the 1961 piece is the earliest I've
> seen in print (though Wilson recalls it from the '50s).
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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