shkeevy; bubbies; more!

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Jul 10 00:19:46 UTC 2009


At 8:09 PM -0400 7/9/09, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Forgot to mention that one housewife angrily called another a "prostitution
>whore."
>
>Perh. because, as an insult, "whore" by itself is no longer as specific as
>formerly.

Ah, retronymy meets the oldest profession.

LH, wondering if "shkeevy" represents a generalization of the
palatalization process we've discussed ages ago wherein "street",
"stroke", and other /str/-initial words become /Str/ among ethnically
Italian (and other) inhabitants of the greater New York metro area...

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list