"Going on a binge"?

[Wilson Gray]

I've been to the Binger Weinfest and there was nothing about it to
suggest it as the source of an English word with a different
pronunciation - _Bi[N]en_, best-nown as the home of die heilige
Hildegard von, vs. _bin[dS]_. The Bernkasteller Weinfest - where a
little kid shouted, "Kuck, Mutti! Ein Mohr!" - is a much bigger deal
with better wine and is only a trivial distance from the twin towns of
Bingen/Bingerbrueck.

It's true that an English-speaker with no knowledge of German
whatsoever might would think that Bingen is pronounced as though
spelled "Binjin." But, somehow, I can't feature an American who would
bother to go a third-rate Weinfest in a German backwater and yet have
no concept of how the name of the backwater is pronounced.

People just make this stuff up.

-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 Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â "Going on a binge"?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A correspondent writes:
>
> If am not mistaken, GOING ON A BINGE "getting very drunk" comes from
> taking a trip to Bingen on the Rhine, near the Rheingau, one of the
> most sublime wine-growing regions in the world.
>
> Is he mistaken? Â The OED merely says of binge n.2 "[Special use of
> dial. binge to soak (a wooden vessel).]"
>
> Joel
>
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