Submariner (was "thousand-yard stare")

[Mark Mandel]

Well, OK, I was assuming "MAR-iner" for "mariner". And yes, I already knew
of the Rime by then. So maybe that argument doesn't hold... water.

m a m

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 11:36 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> > the
> > distinctive spelling made the pronunciation explicit: "the Sub-Mariner"
>
> No, it didn't. _Sub-Mariner_ doesn't exclude "Sub-MaREEner" as a
> pronunciation, especially given the far more widespread "marine" in a
> whole host of environments.
>
> There is "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner." But I'd bet that the
> number of people familiar with this now approaches zero. Sigh! Back in
> the '60's, this poem was still so well known that there was a story in
> the sports section(!) that noted that a certain baseball infielder was
> nicknamed The Ancient Mariner because "he stoppeth one of three." Back
> in the day, even slipping "a person from Porlock" past the hoi polloi
> could be a problem. Why, people once got the joke behind the note on a
> bulletin board that announced a "physics" class in Mad Magazine's
> "Starchie."
>
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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