[Ads-l] You said "sleigh", I said "sled" [Was: Assorted]

[Jonathan Lighter]

This may begin to explain why, as a small child, I *always* referred to a
sled as a "sleigh," even though the only sleigh I'd seen belonged to Santa
Claus.

I was probably six or so before I noticed the difference between the two
items.

JL

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 5:04 PM, Joel Berson <berson at att.net> wrote:

> Snobbish, high-income  (Upper) Washington Heights, especially those
> "sleighing" in Riverside Park.  In the upper Bronx, Van Cortland Park, I
> went "sledding".
>
> Joel
>
>       From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>  Sent: Monday, February 27, 2017 12:14 PM
>  Subject: Re: [ADS-L] assorted
>
> > 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
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>



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------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org