"cumberbund"

[Wilson Gray]

arnold, if you can find a random black person or a random Southerner
of any race who doesn't say "cumberbund," I'll kiss your ass on the
courthouse lawn and give you 45 minutes to draw a crowd. "Matlock" is
set in the South, right? And Andy Griffith is from the South, right?

You remind me of that GI from Darien, CT, who was stunned to hear a
Southerner say, "Git _you_ a tray!"

-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.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:58 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      "cumberbund"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> caught this (spoken) in an episode of Matlock.
>
> not in OED, NOAD2, or AHD4 as a variant of "cummerbund".  is in
> Merriam-Webster Online as a variant (without further comment).  the
> two spellings are listed as variants (with "cumberbund" first) in Q&A
> Times.
>
> but the Wiktionary just labels "cumberbund" as a misspelling of
> "cummerbund".  Brians doesn't mention it.
>
> plenty of sites treat "cumberbund" as the spelling.
>
> arnold
>
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