"sucrye of strabyrs", 1683

[Jonathan Lighter]

Any connection possible with "succory"?

JL

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "sucrye of strabyrs", 1683
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> FWIW, in and around the greater Boston area - you may not notice this,
> because you're hyperaccustomed - to coin a word - to it, *many* people
> pronounce _-berry -bury_ as unstressed [bri]. Hence, reading
> _strabyrs_ as an attempt by a semi-literate woman to write
> ['strO,briz] or some such seems to me a reasonable WAG. I'd also buy
> _sucrye_ as an attempt at a pronunciation-spelling of a
> spelling-pronunciation [sukri/Sukri], though I have no reason to
> believe that any such pronunciation ever existed. WTF, this is just
> another WAG. But...
>
> Youneverknow.
> --
> -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
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > I have the following sentence in a letter from a
> > wife to her husband about to sail out of Marblehead, Mass., in 1683:
> >
> > "I sent you a bucket of the bust sucrye of
> > strabyrs ... I beg your exceptance of my love thear in.â€
> >
> > "Strabyrs" seems obviously
> > "strawberries" Â "Sucrye" is surely related
> > somehow to "sucre", but that word is not in the OED with the meaning
> "sugar".
> >
> > I would be interested in the opinions of the
> > distinguished members of this list about the following hypothesis:
> >
> > 1) Â  Being a transcription from handwriting of
> > 1683, there may be inaccuracies due to fading,
> > interpretation, and omission of abbreviation marks.
> >
> > 2) Â  There is in the MS an abbreviation mark
> > associated with both the R of "sucrye" and the B of "strabyrs" that means
> -ER.
> >
> > 3) Â  The Y in "sucrye" was written instead of I for the long E sound.
> >
> > 4) Â  The YR in "strabyrs" was reversed from RY,
> > whether by a slip of the pen or some other error.
> >
> > 5) Â  This Y was written instead of IE for the long E sound.
> >
> > 6) Â  The semi-silent W in "strawberries" was omitted.
> >
> > Thus the following derivations:
> >
> > sucrye <-- sucr[er][i]e <-- sucrerie
> > strabyrs <-- strab[er][ry]s  <-- stra[w]berr[i]s  <-- strawberries
> >
> > ("Sucrerie" perhaps does not appear in English
> > either. Â I do not read French, but: Â Although
> > "sucrerie" (Fr.) has a different meaning today, a
> > correspondent translates it as "sweet" and cites a 17th-century
> dictionary:
> >
> >>Maybe "sucrerie of strawberries" (sweet of strawberry, strawberry sweet)
> >>
> >>Dictionnaire de Richelet (1680) :
> >>"Sucreries : toutes choses sucrées. Patisserie
> >>composée de sucre et choses douces."
>  >
> > All ayes and nays accepted.
> > Joel
> >
>
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