The rebirth and use of the _merkin_

Dan Goncharoff thegonch at GMAIL.COM
Thu Mar 24 14:48:44 UTC 2011


My guess is a spellchecker is the culprit...
DanG

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:42 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 rebirth and use of the _merkin_
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 4:31 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> > "a public wig". Â Obviously, she takes it off in
> > private.
>
> That's actually food for thought. Did the writer go to write "pubic"
> and inadvertently misspell it? Or was it the intention to sneak in a
> little pun? As when the female protagonist of a TV show casually
> mentioned that her male friend, an underwater welder, could hold his
> breath for three minutes, when he went down.
>
> I'm surprised that the censors let that one go. After all, an
> underwater welder doesn't work holding his breath.
>
> --
> -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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>

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