LBS

[Jonathan Lighter]

At least OBGYN (pronounced as letters) is shorter than something even more
unwieldy.

But what's shorter than /paunz/?

Too surreal?:  they don't know that "lbs." really means pounds. They think
it abbreviates something that is the practical equivalent of pounds, but not
pounds themselves. Like "legal burden sizes" or something.

JL

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 9:04 PM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> Subject:      Re: LBS
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >We recently discussed the unusual use of "tornado" in automated National
> >Weather Service Warnings.
> >In a local Amber Alert this week, the abducted girl was described as
> >weighing "115 /el bi es/", while her abductor weighed "184 /el bi es/."
> >
> >What's wrong with /paunz/? What's with these people?
>
> That's even worse than "oh bee gee why en" for OBGYN, which is short
> for "obstetrician-gyncologist" and is sensibly (but seemingly less
> often) said /AbgaIn/ (forgive me if I'm using the wrong character for
> the cursive small a here).
>
> James Harbeck.
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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