William Safire on the kitchen sink

[Wilson Gray]

In his article on the kitchen sink in today's NYT Mag, Safire notes
that the kitchen sink was once an object made of a "sheet of _zinc_
over wood ..."

Perhaps this is the reason that my late, East-Texas-born grandmother
always referred to our kitchen sink, which differed in no way from the
usual enameled kitchen sink standard in houses built back in the day,
as "the _zinc_," though she referred to the bathroom sink only as "the
_sink_."

-Wilson

--
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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org