Submariner (was "thousand-yard stare")

[Mark Mandel]

Well after the War, too (again); Prince Namor was part of my teens. But the
distinctive spelling made the pronunciation explicit: "the Sub-Mariner" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namor). For undersea Navy men, like my
ex-brother-in-law #1 (Radioman Chief in the nuclear sub service), I've never
known any pron but "submaRINer". He didn't have the stare, though.

m a m

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> My WAG is reinvention. I read the story back in the '50's and I
> remember nothing about it except that one phrase and I remember that
> only because of prior familiarity with that unforgettable, so-called
> "thousand-yard stare" facial expression. I once saw a photo of
> captured German submariners. (Back During The War, there was a
> sea-dwelling superhero named "SubMARiner" and the crew of a submarine
> were also subMARiners. Nowadays, "submaRINer" appears to have become
> the norm.) They all had the stare, though nothing in the largest
> submarine is more than a few feet away.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 7:20 AM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: "thousand-yard stare" (UNCLASSIFIED)
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > "thousand-parsec stare" gets about 9 rgh, all fairly recent I think.
> Looks
> > like it's gotten well established in sf. Of course it could easily have
> bee=
> > n
> > independently reinvented.
> >
> > m a m
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> FWIW, at one time, "thousand-yard stare" was so hip that a
> >> science-fiction author whose name I can no longer recall used it in
> >> the modified form, "thousand-parsec stare" in a story whose title I
> >> can no longer recall in an sf mag whose name I can no longer recall.
> >>
> >> Photos of the thousand-yard stare by David Douglas Duncan
> >>
> >> http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/photography/holdings/
> >>
> >> http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0405/ddd01.html
> >>
> >> -Wilson
>

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