[Ads-l] assorted

[Laurence Horn]

> On Feb 27, 2017, at 12:14 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Feb 27, 2017, at 12:00 PM, Shawnee Moon <moon.shawnee at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> 
>> Mailed from the Moon 🌜
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Mailed from the Moon 🌜
>>> On Feb 27, 2017, at 9:26 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>>> 
>>> "Dear lady, in the unlikely event that you’re on ADS-L at the age of 115 or so, I apologize (again)."
>> 
>> There you are, you untamed whippersnapper! I still walk with a limp!
>> 
>> I grew up in New Jersey, and never heard such a term. We went "sleigh riding" even though the term was incorrect, and should have been sled. Sled riding, or sledding, didn't have the right sound. We'd 'get on the sled, but once on, we were sleigh riding…
>> 
> Hey, I wrote “sleigh” in my message, then wondered if it could possibly have been right, but your mentioning it reminds me that indeed that’s what we (usually) called them—sleighs, rather than sleds.  “Go sleigh-riding” still sounds more natural than “sled-riding”, but for my kids in Connecticut, the object itself was definitely a sled.  For us in Washington Heights, it was a sleigh.  
> 
> LH
> 

Apparently it’s more widespread than I thought.  Here’s DARE, s.v. sleigh:

2 A child’s coasting sled; hence verbs sleigh, sleigh-ride; vbl nouns sleighing, sleigh riding; n sleigh ride. scattered, but esp South Midland, Central Atlantic, Inland North

Wonder if there’s change in progress.  For millennials, I suspect it’s much more likely that they went “sledding” on a “sled" rather than “sleigh-riding” on a “sleigh", and “go sleighing” sounds too much like a pun from a horror movie.  
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