Heard on The Judges: "mother dear," "souphomore"

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:37 PM -0400 10/23/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Judge Joe Brown addressed the mother of a litigant as "mother dear":
>
>"_Mother dear_, step forward!"
>
>In  addition, he referred to a college student multiple times as a
>"souphmore" [sawfmowr].
>
>
>I was mildly surprised to hear "mother dear" used as a term of address
>for someone else's mother. I thought that that that usage had pretty
>much died out. Obviously, I just haven't heard it used, because I've
>been living Boston's Back Bay for the past twenty years.
>
>OTOH, "souphmore," "souphmo'," etc. are pretty much "standard" in BE.
>Only people like me who've made the effort to learn sE say
>"sophomore," which is felt to be a hypercorrection in the 'hood.
>
Does the "souph" [sawf] in "souphmo(re)" represent a reinterpretation
of the word as if it contained the directional "south", given the
independently attested [T]>[f] in syllable-final position?  I think
we've discussed "southmore" itself as an eggcorn...Yup,
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0709C&L=ads-l&D=1&P=20269

I see there are 134 hits for "souphmore", and even a few for "souphomore".

LH

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