Soaken

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 5, 2014, at 11:56 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:

> How do you differentiate between "soaken wet" and "soaking wet" with an
> elided 'g'?

Orthographically.

This would be a nice contribution to maintaining the Law of Conservation of Syllabic Ns (parallel to the Conservation of R discussed earlier).  There are a bunch of cases in which an original <-en> or <and> turns into <-in>, <in->, or <-ing>, as discussed in threads here awhile back, e.g. "a clean shavin' man", "tender lovin'/loving care", and I've argued <spittin'/spitting image>.  And there are other fish in the same kettle, e.g. "at one's beckon call", "puss and boots", "Chip 'n' Dale furniture", "kitten caboodle" (usu. but I think not always a pun), and that great Cajun menu item, "black and red fish".  I'm not sure I recall any in' > en in the collection, though, so "soaken wet" is a welcome addition.

LH

> On Mar 5, 2014 11:45 PM, "Benjamin Barrett" <gogaku at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
>> Subject:      Soaken
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Wiktionary gives "soaken" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soaken) as an
>> obsolete adjective, yet it's very much alive here in Seattle. I heard it
>> today. Until now, I had parsed it as "soaked" but realized today it is
>> different. I think it's most common as a collocation: "soaken wet."
>>
>> The last citation for "soaken" in the OED is 1898. It strikes me as
>> colloquial or dialectical, though it's not labelled.
>>
>> Benjamin Barrett
>> Formerly of Seattle, WA
>>
>> Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos
>>
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