Popsicle

[Mark Mandel]

ic-icle /'aisIk at l/ : rust-icle /'r at stIk@l/  :: ice /ais/ : rust /r at st/
(And likewise "fudgicle".)

All a speaker had to do to coin "rusticle" was to hear "icicle" as "ice" +
"-icle". Why bring in "Creamsicle" at all, or phonological elision? Whatever
the story of the trademark's invention, it clearly metanalyzed the /s/ of
"icicle" from the root to the suffix.

Mark Mandel

On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> At 7:57 AM -0400 4/7/10, Charles Doyle wrote:
> >Passing by a TV yesterday afternoon, I stopped briefly to watch some
> >footage on the History channel about a sunken ship. Long stalactites
> >of rust were clearly being referred to as "rusticles."
> >
> >"Rusticle" garners some 9,000 raw Google hits, including a Wikipedia
> >entry.  Last night "rustsicle" got a little over 1,000 hits, this
> >morning fewer than 100 (go figure!).
> >
> >"Rusticle" looks like a simple blend of "rust" + "-sicle,"
>
> or alternatively of "rust" + "icicle" but influenced by "creamsicle"
> and, dare I say, "fudgicle".  Maybe if the ship had sunk in the Gulf
> of Mexico they would have called them "rust-sickles".
>
>
> LH
>
> >rather than the result of a phonological development--unless we
> >suppose that the [s] following the [t] got swallowed by the [s]
> >before the [t].
>

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