whipping words

[Joel S. Berson]

Can you rule out that it's the imperative?  "Dominatrix, do it on
command!"  Possible, given Larry's next-to-last sentence (a question)
below?  Is there a command to the dominatrix?

Unlikely, I assume, but mustn't we eliminate all other hypotheses?

At 12/10/2009 12:09 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> From a current TV commercial for, it appears, "Wonderful Pistachios":
>
>A woman dressed in a dominatrix outfit with a pistachio-green bustier
>(if that's the right word)

and don't play innocent with us!

Joel

>holds a coiled whip in her hand and places
>a nut on the seat of a straight-back chair. She then stands back at
>arm's length from the chair and nut, presumably a pistachio.
>Voice-over:
>
>"Dominatrix do it..."
>
>[she unleashes the whip, which neatly cracks the nut in half with a loud snap]
>
>"...on command.  Wonderful Pistachios.  Get Cracking."
>
>The interest is, of course, not just another run-of-the-mill
>S&M-infused nut commercial but the reanalysis of "dominatrix" as a
>plural. Of what, one wonders--"dominatrick"?  And don't dominatrixes,
>or dominatrices, standardly make *others* do things on command rather
>than doing things on command themselves?  Clearly, mangling the
>morphology is just the first step on that slippery slope...
>
>LH
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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