"close line"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Feb 1 19:02:33 UTC 2009


At 7:51 AM -0800 2/1/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Jan 31, 2009, at 11:22 AM, Larry Horn wrote:
>
>>>
>>But there's occasion for further eggcorning/reanalysis of e.g. "put
>>on your clos(e)", as attested by children who refer to a single
>>article of apparel as "a clo".  (For some adults, a clo is also a
>>unit for measuring the insulation value of clothing.)
>>
>>Maybe it's not just children (although I first became aware of it
>>that way in the wild).  I see the urban dictionary has this entry for
>>CLO:
>>
>>A single piece of clothing; a shirt, a hat.
>>"What are you getting Amy for Christmas?" "Oh, I don't know;
>>probably a clo."
>
>joining "kudo", "gyro", "bicep", "homosapien", "parenthesee" and
>"indice" and similar items discussed here back in august, the
>historical "pea" and "cherry", and others.
>
Including the rare poy, as in

Parent:  "X has a lot of poise"
Child:   "What's a poy?"

It's harder to contextualize a lexicalization vector for "poy" along
the lines of "clo" and "kudo", though.  Proof:  it's not in
urbandictionary.  (Not on a relevant meaning, at least--there are 6
other entries for _poy_.)

LH

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