buttockses

[Wilson Gray]

Wasn't "breasteses" popularized as a joking, pswaydo-BE pronunciation
by the old Fox TV show, _In Living Color_? My impression of the
various sketches in which this pronunciation was used is that the
point was that, since black men prefer women with back, a black guy
talking about breasts wouldn't even know how to pronounce the word.
(Forgive the syntax of the proceeding.)

-Wilson

On Feb 10, 2008 4:00 PM, 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: buttockses
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Feb 10, 2008 3:03 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> >
> > At 10:26 AM -0800 2/10/08, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> > >from yesterday's "wait wait ... don't tell me" on NPR, two uses of
> > >"buttockses" in reference to israeli soldiers who entertained
> > >themselves by mooning palestinians.  each soldier exposed his
> > >buttocks; as a group, they exposed their buttockses (parallel to
> > >"asses", "backsides", "butts", etc.).  so, a double plural, where the
> > >standard form would just be plural, regardless of how many people are
> > >involved.
> >
> > The reanalysis of "buttocks" as a singular is also supported by the
> > spelling "buttox" (57,000 raw hits) and the occasional plural
> > "buttoxes" (635, or twice as many as "buttockses").  Maybe someone is
> > now imagining that "buttox" is an ablaut variant of "botox"...
>
> Cf. "bollox"/"bollix"...
>
> And while we're on double plurals for body parts, what about
> "breasteses" (and variants thereof)?
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
>
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