_hep_ vs. _hip_, trivially revisited

[Jonathan Lighter]

GB has "hup-two-three" only from 1923 and "hut-..." only from 1941.

Of course, "hup/ hut" reduces "one" rather than "left."

Getting back to "Hep!" It considerably antedates WWI:

1862 [George C. Strong] _Cadet Life at West Point_ (Boston: Burnham)
[ref. to 1857]: One, two, three, four; one, two, three; hep, hep, hep.

JL

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:23 AM, Ron Butters <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ron Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: _hep_ vs. _hip_, trivially revisited
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> When I was a child, my great-uncle-by-marriage, CW Toms, who was a veteran minor army officer of WWI took great pleasure at family get-togethers in forcing my brothers and me to march around the dining table to his "hut-2-3-4" commands. But he may also have been saying "hup" some of the time. In any case,  it was definitely a mid-central vowel followed by a nonback voicerless consonant. Given that "2" begins with a /t/, it would not be impossible that "hup" would be perceived as, and even artuculated as, "hut" and vice versa, and indeed the final consonant could come out sometimes as an indeterminable glottal stop.
>
> Sent from my Droid Charge on Verizon 4GLTE
>
> ------Original Message------
> From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Sunday, December 11, 2011 7:03:02 PM GMT-0500
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] _hep_ vs. _hip_, trivially revisited
>
> On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 6:40 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Berrey & Van den Bark
>
> Clearly, then, these two had were never "nervous in the service"!
> Surely, no one who has ever considered the mind-numbing boredom of a
> two-hour session of dismounted drill could possibly consider "HEP!"
> hep!
>
> --
> -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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