the butt patrol

[Charles C Doyle]

I remember being lectured, quite specifically, in a high school geometry class (c1959) about the impropriety of referring to the drawing instrument as "a compass"; rather, it is "a pair of compasses."  But nobody heeded the prescription.  (Milton's phrase "golden compasses" becomes, allusively, "the golden compass" in the title of Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy).

I heard "a scissor" frequently as a youngster, though the form was associated with the 2nd- and 3rd-generation German and Czech immigrants in the community.

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 8:09 AM

I've heard the entire tool referred to as "a scissor."

Possibly by me - and if so, possibly for many decades.

Google turns up a couple of dozen hits for "I need a scissor to [X]," all
from the past five or so years. Nothing for the phrase in GB.

So that makes me kind of a language pioneer, right? Right?

JL

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:09 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: the butt patrol
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 12:11 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
> wrote:
> > (with ADS-L references)
> >
> >
> http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/a-pain-in-the-grammatical-butt/
> >
>
> And then there's that pronunciation, "buh-tox" [b^.taks].
>
> I use a pair of / some / these / those scissors and never _a_
> scissors, etc. and I regard _a pant_, etc. as the specialized jargon
> of a particular field of endeavor, hence, none of my business.
> Different strokes, etc. But, almost since childhood, I've wondred, if
> you took a pair of scissors apart, would you then have two scissors?
> The two halves of a pair of scissors? the two blades / pieces / parts
> of a pair of scissors? A two-membered set for which there is no name?
> Two random, unnameable objects that, when properly joined together,
> _become_ "a pair of scissors"?
>
> The mind is boggled!
>
> And why is _ss_ pronounced as [z], anyroad?
>
> --
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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

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