Westconsin

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Were the sports teams also known as "Badgers"? That should have given you a clue. How many schools would have chosen a rodent for a mascot? (Of course, there are the Minnesota "Gophers"--opposed, perhaps, to the Mini Sewti "Go-fors").
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
Date:         Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:05:21
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] Westconsin

For an embarrassingly long time, I was under the impression that my
father had attended the University of_West Conson_, even after I had
come to know that there was a state named "Wisconsin." Sometimes, I'm
slow to make connections and corrections.

-Wilson

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 1:25 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Westconsin
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 1:14 PM -0400 4/20/10, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>>One of my adult literacy learners today spelled that The Badger State
>>as "Westconsin."  I thought it was a possible eggcorn, and in her case
>>I think it was, but I got 175k raw ghits on it, most of which referred
>>to businesses in western Wisconsin where it seems to be a conscious
>>blend to name the region.
>>
>>Herb
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> Also some hits (all self-conscious coinages, I suspect) for "Eastconsin".
>
> Of course people in and around the states typically destress the
> first syllable drastically and even resyllabify (w@ SKAN s at n), which
> would make any such reanalysis (to "Westconsin") all the more
> unlikely in situ.
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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