"hawk" v.3

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â "hawk" v.3
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>
> I can't remember how the subject came up, but a colleague and I, while drinking coffee this morning, had a small argument about the verb "hawk" in the sense of 'clear the throat of phlegm'. Â He, speaking a dialect that lacks the "open o," insisted that the word is spelled "hock." Â Of course, I won the argument. Â But I am thinking that the OED needs to enter "hock" as a variant spelling.
>
> Searching the currently-common phrase "hawk a loogie," I discover 256,000 raw Google hits with the "hock" spelling, only 110,000 with "hawk." Â I informally questioned a class with comparable results; a majority favored the spelling "hock," with an unexpected handful proposing "hack" ("hack a loogie" garners 11,000 GH's), perhaps folk-etymologically influenced by the coughing sense of "hack," which the OED regards as a special use of "hack" in the general sense of 'chop' (v.1.14). Â Of course, a hacking cough is dry, unlike the raising of a loogie.
>
> --Charlie
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

"blow a _hawker_" > "blow a hacker"

as

"hawk a loogie" > "hack a loogie"

?

Possibly.

http://warcraft-source.com/board/index.php?topic=13559.0

--
-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

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