Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 14:40:30 -0400
From: Larry Horn
Subject: Re: P.S. on banshees

At 4:15 PM -0500 4/23/98, Mike Salovesh wrote:
>Bill King wrote, in re "like a banshee"=frantic:
>>
>> I've heard it too. I've also heard "we were just wailing," meaning
>>working
>> intensely. Also, "the police were wailing on him" usually means someone
>> resisting arrest has police using their billy clubs on him, though not
>> screaming like banshees while doing so.
>
>Or is that really "whale", as in "whale the tar out of him"?
>
>I ask in part because I remember a fourth grade teacher who tried to
>teach my class, in Milwaukee, that Moby Dick was a HHHwite HHHwail. I
>know, the extra H's exaggerate. So did my fourth grade teacher, in her
>campaign to get us to stop dropping our aitches. Maybe she thought we
>were displaced Cockneys, oping to get back to ome sweet ome.
>
>Yes, I know, "wh" spellings CAN mark initial lip-rounded unvoiced
>vocoids, otherwise known as "aitches" . . . but that was a totally
>alien pronunciation for Milwaukee.
>The rest of what I remember of that teacher's campaign is that in every
>recess period we tried to outdo each other in inventing total
>incongruities by misusing her model. I'm still tempted to talk about
>hWoot HWowls, for example. (Or, considering another thread here, are
>you folks talking about hWowling banshees?)
>
>-- mike salovesh
> anthropology department
> northern illinois university PEACE !!!