"double negative"

[James A. Landau <JJJRLandau@netscape.com>]

http://channels.isp.netscape.com/news/story.jsp?floc=ne-world-12-l16&idq=/ff/story/1001%2F20120210%2F2043.htm&sc=i

"Members of a popular Internet forum raised more than HK$100,000 ($12,900) to take out a full-page newspaper ad last week urging the Hong Kong government to change rules so that children born to parents who are both mainland residents — known as "double negatives" — don't automatically get right of abode."

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Re "mohawk" versus "mohican", in 2005, in New Jersey, during a group discussion I asked a teenaged boy what he called his haircut, hoping he would say "mohawk" so that I could get the discussion onto the subject of the Iroquois.  Instead he said it was a "mohican", a term I was not familiar with.  So we have a US data point for "mohican".

(Nobody in the group happened to think of a quip about "the last of the mohicans")

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Aside to Wilson Gray---a phrase I have sometimes found useful: "You are one of the reasons 'honkey' is a swear word".

And to sneak my way onto one more continuing topic, I just turned down an offer of a cinnamon-raisin bagel.

    - Jim Landau

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