He says "overpass", I say ...

[Wilson Gray]

Just joking, Victor. When I saw your subject line, the term used in
Saint Louis way back when, "viaduct," just popped into my head. After
many years of living among the freeways of California, I, too, have
come to acknowledge the primacy of "overpass." At the relevant time in
Saint Louis, there was no need for a word for what's now known as an
"underpass."

-Wilson

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 12:12 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: He says "overpass", I say ...
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  True, but "low underpass" is confusing, if it makes any sense at all.
> Yet "low overpass" means something other than what it is used for here,
> so it's not much of an improvement.
>
> Storrow Drive is notorious for low clearance of its many underpasses,
> routinely snagging moving vans coming in to drop off incoming students.
> However, the logical implication here would be of a depressed roadbed in
> an underpass, not of the vertical clearance of the passage. I am not
> entirely sure how I would express it in a short phrase, but "low
> overpass" ain't it.
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 7/12/2010 11:41 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>> John M Guilfoil and Sean Teehan, describing heavy rain Saturday that
>> caused flash floods in the Boston area, write:
>>
>> "As rain fell, areas like Storrow Drive and low overpasses in Boston,
>> Cambridge, and Somerville turned into dangerous makeshift rivers; and
>> drivers were not ready."
>>
>> Boston Globe, Sunday July 11, page B7.  Same still on the web site
>> (boston.com).
>>
>> I too would have been unready at the overpasses.  And just think how
>> submerged the underpasses would have been!  (Storrow Drive is
>> notorious for the latter at least.)
>>
>> Joel
>
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--
-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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