Fron a Facebook post:

[Jonathan Lighter]

> But I was thinking of someone writing down _assordid_, a word that he
could never have seen anywhere in print, and simply not wondering
about it at all....

Wait a minute, Wilson! You mean you think Joe and Joanie Blow usually
"wonder" about the words they use and how they came to be spelled as they
think they are?  Or that they will customarily check a dictionary before
(or after) writing whatever pops into their heads?

Methinks you spent too much time in linguistics grad school.

JL

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 10:24 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Fron a Facebook post:
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 5:38 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > No I didn't.
>
> Uh, I don't get that. Do you mean that you immediately recognized that
> the proper form of the idiom was?
>
> So did I.
>
> Or do you mean that you immediately recognized _assordid_ as a word
> that you had never before encountered before, but, clearly, it had to
> be an error for _assorted_, so that there was no reason for you to
> wonder about it?
>
> Okay. I can see that.
>
> But I was thinking of someone writing down _assordid_, a word that he
> could never have seen anywhere in print, and simply not wondering
> about it at all, not wondering what connection there might be between
> _sordid_ and _AS sordid_, how the latter found its way into the idiom,
> etc., hence seeing no reason to look into a dictionary.
>
> I concede that you had only my post to go by and not my entire train of
> thought.
>
> "Sorry about that!" to coin a phrase. ;-)
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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>



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