[Ads-l] locomotives as female

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sat Apr 18 20:09:30 UTC 2015


Could you give the titles of some of those movies, Larry?

I've often wondered just how true that claim was.

BTW, engineer George Alley, in "The Wreck on the C&O Road"  (ca1895)  says,
"I want to die with the engine I love,/ One hundred and forty-three."

JL


JL



On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:40 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: locomotives as female
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Right, you just have to make sure it's not a locomotif.
>
> (Of course the younger generations haven't been raised on all those old =
> movies in which love scenes pan to shots of trains entering tunnels.)=20
>
> LH
>
> > On Apr 17, 2015, at 11:19 AM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> =
> wrote:
> >=20
> > My nephew, who is a great train buff, the other day referred to a
> > locomotive as "her."   I asked about the gender, and he said it's
> > conventional to refer to locomotives as feminine.
> >=20
> > New one for me.
> >=20
> > Herb
> >=20
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-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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