The Colbert Report: "soda water"

[Dave Wilton]

Colbert actually said, "now the syrup in that soda water..."

He was making a fine distinction between "soda pop" and its constituent
elements.



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Joel S. Berson
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 8:06 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: The Colbert Report: "soda water"

At 5/14/2009 10:49 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
>Did anyone else notice the inadvertent use of (old?) Southern "soda
>_water_" by Colbert, a native of South Carolina, in an environment in
>which he otherwise was using "soda _pop_"?

Was it clear he meant the flavored stuff, and not "seltzer"?  The
latter is what I think when I hear "soda water".  (The OED agrees
with me, on both "soda pop" and "soda water".)

Or, Wilson, are you saying that in the (old?) South "soda water"
could refer to flavored carbonated drinks?

Joel

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