beknown

[Wilson Gray]

Well, it's probably beknownst to all that I've long been holden to
Larry for much valuable commentary on my posts.

-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, Aug 5, 2009 at 3:38 PM, Laurence Horn<laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: beknown
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 8:07 AM -0700 8/5/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>On Aug 5, 2009, at 6:44 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>>
>>>Yeah, but "beknown" is called "archaic," and the 1876 "beholden" is
>>>from a
>>>book called _Modern English_.
>>>
>>>My mother and grandmother used to say "beholden" all the time...
>>>
>>>
>>>On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 9:03 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>At 8/5/2009 08:45 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>>The final OED ex. is from 1865.
>>>>>
>>>>>But how did they miss this?:
>>>>>
>>>>>2006
>>>>>
>>>>http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=94993&atid=24648&category=UserReviews
>>>>>: i believe john ireland made his name beknown in this film.
>>>>
>>>>They must have been sleeping though Katharine Hepburn movies.  After
>>>>all, she said "beholden" in "Philadelphia Story" in 1938 and again in
>>>>1940, and the final OED ex. for that is from 1873.
>>
>>i'm baffled by this exchange.  why is "beholden" (dialectal/informal,
>>but still current) being discussed in a thread about "beknown"?
>>"beknown" is at best rare these days, and it's not even clear that
>>when it occurs it's a survival of the older verb form, rather than an
>>innovation on the basis of "unbeknownst", "renowned", analytic "be
>>known", etc.
>>
>>but here's a further example i found:
>>
>>   Please understand we have been selling these brands for a decade
>>and have few, if any unhappy customers who have made themselves
>>beknown to us (with a total sample size of thousands!) or returns...
>>so please don't be unduly alarmed!
>>http://www.houstonsmostwanted.com/page2.html
>>
> One structural difference between the two is that "beknown" in many
> contexts, including the one just above, could be a reparsing of "be
> known"--"who made themselves be known to us" is perfectly natural for
> me, and I can imagine someone associating this with "unbeknownst" and
> spelling it as one word.  This is impossible (or at least unlikely)
> with "beholden".
>
> LH
>
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