Ben's rando, Virginia's retronyms

[Jonathan Lighter]

Point taken.

"Psycho" doesn't quite fit the pattern; it was originally short for
"psychoneurotic," as anyone picking up the third volume of HDAS would be
able to see for himself if such a volume existed. It dates back to World War
I in that sense, but didn't become general and crazier for another
twenty-five years.

The -o of "wino" may be different, though "wino" goes back to the twenties.

JL

On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 10:13 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Ben's rando, Virginia's retronyms
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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.
>
> LH
>
> >
> >
> >On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 11:57 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> >wrote:
> >
> >>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >>  -----------------------
> >>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> >>  Subject:      Ben's rando, Virginia's retronyms
> >>
> >>
>
> >>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>  In his "On Language" column in this weekend's Times Sunday Magazine,
> >>  Ben Z writes about student slang, citing the master (Connie Eble) and
> >>  others, and discusses "rando" (for a sketchy random stranger).
> >>  Something that strikes me about this form is that while looking
> >>  superficially as though it's formed from truncating "random", "rando"
> >>  is yet another derogatory -o label, as in "weirdo", "fatso", "wino",
> >>  "psycho", and such.  I figure there must be a paper on these
> >>  somewhere in American Speech but a quick web search instead pulled up
> >>  this summary by Mikael Parkvall on Linguist List:
> >>  http://linguistlist.org/issues/9/9-360.html.  (some interesting
> >>  cross-linguistic observations therein)
> >>
> >>  Two pages later, Virginia Heffernan's touching eulogy to the
> >>  old-fashioned telephone is rife with retronyms, from the standard
> >>  ("analog landline telephone") to the recondite ("wireful"), and
> >>  "rotary" must be in there somewhere.  Reminds me--this time of year
> >>  you can't follow football without hearing more than you ever wanted
> >>  to know about the "human polls".
> >>
> >>  LH
> >>
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