whuggle

[Amy West]

On 5/17/12 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Wed, 16 May 2012 12:07:08 -0400
> From:    Ben Zimmer<bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject: Re: whuggle
>
> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 7:56 AM, Amy West wrote:
>> >
>> >  Since Ben (Hey, why wasn't there a Word column in the Boston Globe this
>> >  past weekend?) brings up the issue of variants, let me point out that
>> >  the pron. I gave is for HS teens in Worcester, MA.
> Erin McKean, who has been writing the Globe column every other week,
> is taking a break.
Bummer for us readers: good for her. Hopefully it's because Wordnik is
going well.
>   You may see guest columns for those weeks.
Hopefully that will be good: so it looks like Jan Freeman is completely
out of the rotation now?
> Meanwhile, I'm continuing my biweekly schedule.
Good!
>   Next Sunday's column
> is on a topic of interest to ADS-Lers -- the Dictionary of Modern
> Proverbs.
I'll look for it on the Web as I'll be away from my print copy (travelling).

Back to the word in the subject line: "whuggle" is NOT in my teen's
active or passive vocabulary, so at least regarding this minimal sample,
it has not moved beyond that MUD use. My guess is that there's no
real-life semantic need for a term meaning "to hug virtually," because
they still hug in real-life.

---Amy West

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