comic 1860s pronunciation?

[Jonathan Lighter]

1862 in _Minnesota History_ XXV (March, 1944) 27: It will be a joke on the
band if the report proves to be a "ho-ax."

Hoe-axe! Get it!  Maybe you had to be there. Anyway, this level of word play
seems to have had somewhat greater prestige then than it does now.  Consider
_ossifer_ (officer) and _avalanche_ (ambulance) and _jigadier brindle_, all
in HDAS.

Isaac L. Taylor (1837-1863), a schoolteacher, was the writer.

JL



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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