antedating "hobo" 1885

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:11 AM -0400 5/25/09, Mark Mandel wrote:
>"color" and "honor" do not follow the pattern <CoCo>.
>
>m a m

No, and the ones that do all stem from stemless prefixes or from
non-nativized loanwords, I venture to guess.  "Mono" is the clearest
example, pronounced /mano/ (in the U.S.) whether it's short for
"mononucleosis", "monaural"/"monophonic" (stereo vs. mono), or
anything else.  And while (as the OED confirms) the slur "homo" is
always /homo/, even if uttered by a British slurrer who would
pronounce the full label with an initial /ha-/, the Latin _homo
(sapiens)_ may be either /hamo/ or /homo/.

LH

>
>On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 10:39 PM, Randy Alexander
><strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 11:52 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  Subject: ?  ?  ? Re: antedating "hobo" 1885
>>>  Interesting that the writer feels it necessary to describe the
>>>  pronunciation of the vowels. I would have taken that for granted.
>>
>>  While yes, most of the words in English that follow that pattern have two
>>  "long" o's, some do not, like color, honor, and for most speakers, mono.
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org