[Ads-l] [boxed set >] "boxset"

[Wilson Gray]

On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 8:55 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

>
> I would most naturally say "a box lunch"--not "a boxed lunch."  But we
> Sout=
> herners are simple folks (it's the humidity).
>
> --Charlie


I'm an East Texan by birth, myself, and the possibility - nay, probability,
if not certainty - that "box lunch" < "boxed set" - has, until now, not
entered my mind. This is probably true of *any* BE speaker who's not a
total prescriptive pedant. When I was a pre-teen - i.e. prior to 1950, an
easy way to cause the bruz to "knot up" was to say, in the tense, dramatic
tones of the  voice-overers of those adventure-radio days:

"Meanwhile. Back in the desert. Where the men who had brought box lunches
were eating their dates..."

For "box lunches" to be just a clip of "boxed lunches" renders the pun null
and void.
-- 
-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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