[Ads-l] locomotives as female

[Jonathan Lighter]

Let this be a lesson to you, Joel. I jotted down that note years ago,
knowing that my day would come round at last. At the same time, I noted
that "Pre-19th C. exx. tend strongly to be Scottish."

Now I can't find the cite in OED either. Why not?


No matter. No matter.

Bk. III, l. 624ff. [Ed. A. M. M. Duncan, Canongate, 1997, p. 43]:

"And thar schip thai lychtyt sone
And rowyt syne with all thar mycht,
And scho that swa wes maid lycht
Raykyt slydand throu the se."

Bk. XVII, l.399ff:

"[T]hai...
Ordaynyt a schip with full gret fer
To cum with all hyr apparail
Rycht to the wall for till assaill."

Katie Wales, _Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English_ (Cambridge U.P.,
1996), p. 153, also observes that "the OED's first example of _she_ in
co-reference with _ship_ dates from the fourteenth century and Barbour's
poem 'The Bruce.' used by the narrator."

Somebody at Oxford has some mighty tall 'splainin' to do.

JL

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 2:09 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: locomotives as female
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> >
> wrote:
>
> > Latin "navis" is feminine too; but in that system no one could have
> thought
> > much of it.
> >
>
> As has been pointed out, "Honi soit qui mal y pense."
>
>
> --
> -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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