[Ads-l] [Non-DoD Source] Re: A regional term for the crane fly (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jeff Prucher]

My seven-year-old will often call out after he's supposed to be asleep that there's a daddy-longlegs in his room, which is invariably a crane fly (I have never had a name for them -- I just call them big mosquito-looking things), and I'll say "that's not a daddy longlegs, that's just one of those big, mosquito-looking things". But now I don't know whether he's simply confusing one long-leggity beastie with another, or whether "daddy-longlegs" is actually the name for them in his dialect. (He's a native Bay Area speaker, whereas I'm more a North Midlands kind of guy.)


Of course, we don't even have what I consider to be actual daddy-longlegs in the Bay Area, which, like Bill, is what I call harvestmen. We only seem to have pholcids (the long-legged cellar spider on Snopes), which it turns out are also daddy-longlegs.

Jeff Prucher







On Thursday, April 14, 2016 9:54 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:


>
>
>A daddy-longlegs, obviously.
>
>JL
>
>On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Mullins, Bill CIV (US) <
>william.d.mullins18.civ at mail.mil> wrote:
>
>> CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
>>
>> Okay, if you call a crane fly a daddy longlegs (and you should be calling
>> it a mosquito hawk, as every Right Thinking American does), what do you
>> call this:
>>
>> http://healthyhomegardening.com/images/Blossom/daddylongleg3.jpg
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> > > -----------------------
>> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > > Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> > > Subject:      A regional term for the crane fly
>> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> > > ---------
>> > >
>> > > "The crane fly, a winged insect which looks like a large [gigantic,
>> > > IMO - W] mosquito, is called a daddy longlegs in some parts of the
>> > > world (such as
>> > > England) ..."
>> > >
>> > > http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/longlegs.asp for
>> > > the crane fly
>> > >
>> > > It's also called a "daddy long-legs" in East Texas.
>> > >
>> > > Well, by the colored, anyway.
>> > > --
>> > > -Wilson
>> CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
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