gripe

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:13 PM -0400 10/18/10, Paul Johnston wrote:
>There's also "gi(v)es me the grue" (Makes me sick) and "gi(v)es me
>the boak"--the last one, historically bowk (and still that in
>Northern England) is usually a verb, to vomit.  "grue", I think, is
>the same word as the beginning of "gruesome".  Don't know if either
>of these words made it over here to the US.
>
>Paul Johnston

Well, there's a "grue" I'm familiar with, but it's not the one hiding
in "gruesome".  In a classic paper or book (I forget which, since I
didn't read it, but just recall the cite) on induction, the mid-20th
century philosopher of Nelson Goodman proposes "grue" as the label
for a color of objects that are green when seen before noon (or
whenever) and blue when seen after it.  (As opposed to "bleen", which
has the opposite property but didn't catch on to the same extent.)
The puzzle had to do with why we assume objects that look green are
green rather than grue.

Let's see if I can google it up...  Yup, and even with a somewhat
less than immortal ode to the color "grue":

Nelson Goodman seems quite keen
Induction yet to show anew
Is somewhat sick as will be seen
And may not be completely true.

Is this leaf a lovely green?
Or is it rather colored grue?
Is the sky above quite bleen?
Or am I right in seeing blue?

I really don't care to be mean
And have no wish to Goodman skew;
But childish puzzles can demean;
Has he nothing else to do??
-JSH, "On 'The New Riddle of Induction'"
http://www.massline.org/philosdog/G/Goodman.htm

Hmmm...maybe "gruesome" isn't that far off the mark.

LH

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