antibiotic = 'effective medicine' (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

If he called himself Beaner he'd lose a lot of votes - for so many reasons.

JL

On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: antibiotic = 'effective medicine' (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:10 AM, W Brewer wrote:
>
> > LH: <<<Erect Cantor?>>>
> >
> > WB: Uh-oh, looks like I pulled a bayhner. No, I had no intention of
> dissing
> > the current Speaker of the House; that would be a hate crime.
> (Ithyphallic
> > equestrian would be stretching it.)
> >
> > LH: <<<aha, John Boehner, the *Speaker* of the House>>>
> >
> > WB: Well, anyway, he used to be House Majority Leader, 2006-2007. All
> these
> > musical chairs gets confusing.
> >
> > LH: <<<ethnically correct front (even if no longer rounded) vowel.>>>
> > WB: If Johnbo were really up front, he be a beaner.
> >
> Ah, but "Beaner" with [i] would come from the unrounding of [y], which
> would have arisen from Bü(h)ner* or Bue(h)ner.  Compare "shtick", from the
> Yiddish unrounding of ü in a closed syllable.  In "geese" or "feet", where
> the [i] really does come from unrounding, but only as a result of the Great
> Vowel Shift:
>
> go:si > goe:s [fronting via umlaut] > ge:s [unrounding] > gi:s [Vowel
> Shift]
>
> And for Boehner, it's too late for the vowel shift (and perhaps for other
> things; we'll see). So he's more of a bane-er than a beaner.
>
> LH
>
> *There was an outfielder for the Yankees and Mariners with that name a
> couple of decades back, Jay Buhner, but he opted for [byu:n at r].
>
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