Ben's rando, Virginia's retronyms

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:32 PM -0400 10/31/10, Alice Faber wrote:
>On 10/31/10 10:13 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>At 8:28 AM -0400 10/31/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>Did I mention "convo" (conversation), heard a week or so ago? "To keep
>>>the
>>>convo going."
>>>
>>>This "-o" business has been going on in Australia more than here for at
>>>least fifty years.
>>>
>>>JL
>>
>>But with the pejorative flavor of the ones mentioned below? There
>>may be a more general process of truncation + -o as in "convo" that I
>>think is not the same as the human -o slurs involved in "rando" and
>>its "wino/wacko/weirdo/pscyho"-type sponsors.
>
>On Etsy.com, a cover site for craftspeople selling their stuff, "convo"
>is standard terminology for an IM-type dialog (say, if I have a question
>about an item being offered for sale). It bothered me at first, but I've
>gotten used to it. I have no idea whether the usage is Etsy-specific, or
>whether they got it from some other site. Also, for what it's worth,
>it's headquartered in Brooklyn (NY).
>--
"Convo" is also widely used for conversions of various types (well,
not religious ones as far as I can tell), but in neither of these
cases is it a human-directed pejorative.

LH

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