"corpii" as plural of "corpus"
Robin Hamilton
robin.hamilton2 at BTINTERNET.COM
Wed Mar 10 04:46:10 UTC 2010
> Just for general purposes, what would be the folk-derived plural of
> "corps"? For that matter, what /is/ the plural of corps?
>
> VS-)
corpsies
"Little corpsies inside boxes", derived from the well-loved lines of the
folksong:
Grocers' boxies / without topsies
Sandals were / for Clemantine.
(Note the significant deployment of Dipodic Metre by the anonymous author of
the above lines, indicating their folk origin. The pronounciation of
"boxes" as "boxies" [thus "corpsies"] in the first line quoted is enforced
by the internal pararhyme.)
Robin
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list