eye dialect was RE: nekkid

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:57 AM -0700 3/15/11, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Mar 15, 2011, at 10:21 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>>  While I'm sure 'come', even in the sexual sense, originated as a
>>  verb, what I was wondering was whether the 'cum' spelling was
>>partly motivated as much by the fact that it was functioning (in
>>its first cumming) as a noun as by its specialized meaning.  Note
>>too that as a verb, "cum" now sports its own regularized past
>>tense, "cummed", which may or may not betray a denominal origin
>>(cf. "ringed" vs. "rang", although in that case the two verbs are
>>mere homonyms). While "comed" exists, it's far rarer.
>
>some discussion (with a reference to ADS-L) here:
>
>AZ, 12/3/06: Does anybody have a word for this? We do now.:
>  http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003853.html
>
>unfortunately, i have no information on the history of the spelling
>CUM (for the noun or the verb). (OED2 has the noun COME, in the
>relevant sense, only from 1923.)
>
It might be noted in connection with the original motivation for the
thread that in this LL posting Arnold describes "cum" as an
"ear-spelling", as distinguished from the eye-dialect represented in
eye-spelling.  Nothing implied about regional variation here,
although I was suggesting that for some writers there might be
something (sump'n?) implied about noun vs. verb and, of course,
register.

LH

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