flay / flea (and other "ea" words)

[Jonathan Lighter]

We discussed the strange history of "yeah" some time back. My interpretation
is that the word of assent must go way back in speech, but I remain troubled
by the startling paucity of clear-cut exx., no matter how spelled, before
around 1900.

I've never heard of "shea butter" either.

JL



On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      flay / flea (and other "ea" words)
>
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>
> In my Shakespeare class this morning, discussing _King Lear_, I got to
> wondering out loud why the _Riverside Shakespeare_ , which professes to show
> modernized spellings, gives the verb "flay" as "flea"--thereby ensuring that
> most students will mispronounce and therefore misunderstand the word: "With
> her nails / She'll flea thy wolvish visage" (1.4.307-08).
>
> I took the occasion (a "teachable moment," in the current cliche) to ask
> the old favorite history-of-the-language "trivia" question:  What four
> common current English words have that "ea" vowel spelling and preserve the
> pronunciation /e/?
>
> The first answer proffered--to wide concurrence among the (female)
> students--was "shea butter."  I had to be informed that the term designates
> a substance or ingredient for skin softening.
>
> Gotta work on my vocabulary skills . . . .
>
> --Charlie
>
> P.S.  When we got to the word "yea," the students clamorously asserted that
> the word is spelled "yay."  Of course, many of the traditional uses of "yea"
> are obsolete, but is "yay" (so common in youthful e-mails as a general
> signifier of approval or applause) the same word?  The OED is hesitant to
> say so.  It's entry for the interjection "yay," marked "slang" (why?), says
> "Phrh. f. 'yay' adv. [as in 'he is about yay tall'] used as an exclamation,
> or f. 'yeah' adv. used similarly."  The adverb "yay," in turn, is said to be
> "prob. f. 'yea.'"
>
> But isn't it more likely that the interjection "yay" comes directly from
> "yea" (a resounding affirmation, the antonym of "nay") simply a variant
> spelling, as my students intuited (the OED shows for "yea" about every
> imaginable historical spelling except "yay"--including "yai"!)?  The OED's
> earliest dating of the adverb "yay" is from 1960, whereas its earliest
> dating of the interjection "yay" is from 1963.  But cheerleaderish "yay" is
> easily traceable (in Google Books) back at least as far as 1921 (I haven't
> searched very hard).
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