sweatxedo

James Harbeck jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA
Tue Sep 1 02:05:41 UTC 2009


>Used to have a girlfriend was from Scituate ['sItS@,wIt]. It's on the
>South Shore, a hootna holler from Cohasset and a mind-numbing drive
>from Somerville ['s^m at vl] for Thanksgiving.

I drove down to Row Disland from Somerville one Thanksgiving, and
down to the Cape for a Chekhovian country house weekend one summer.
But in my years living in 02144 I always managed to avoid Scituate,
in spite of where it's scituated.

I'm put in mind of Vonnegut's _God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater_, which
has a town called Pisquontuit, which those who like it say "pawn-it"
and those who don't say "piss-on-it."

As to sweatxedo, the solution to the mystery of why it shows up just
in a couple of widely spaced (2005, 2008) hits before the 2009 letter
is that it's a recasting of a brand name, Sweatsedo. See
http://sweatsedo.com/ . (They also own the domain name
http://sweatxedo.com/ and it points to their site.)

What I wonder is how those who spell it with the x pronounce it --
[ts], [ks], or [tks] (the last of which could really be a
coarticulation -- and perhaps more like [kts] -- producing a
peanut-butter effect).

James Harbeck.

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



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