rents - parents

[Damien Hall]

My wife (b. 1964, brought up and educated in northern NJ, college in suburban Philly) certainly uses 'rents' for 'parents'. While this wouldn't allow an antedating of the unverified 1968 cite, as she wouldn't have been calling them that before the age of 4, it certainly confirms that this was fairly common usage by at least the late 1970s and into the early 1980s (she was in college 1982-6).

Another similar clipping she used then and uses jocularly now is 'za' ('pizza'), previously discussed here.

Damien

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Damien Hall

University of Kent (UK)
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 'Towards a New Linguistic Atlas of France'

English Language and Linguistics, School of European Culture and Languages

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