Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 16:15:54 -0500
From: Mike Salovesh
Subject: Re: P.S. on banshees

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 universit
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From: Automatic digest processor (4/23/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

ADS-L Digest - 21 Apr 1998 to 22 Apr 1998 98-04-23 00:00:43
There are 8 messages totalling 296 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

1. pron question
2. pron
3. Pomo (3)
4. Query: Monophthongization of /aw/ in S. Carolina and Georgia
5. the life of the mind
6. (in)flammable

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Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 02:11:32 -0700
From: Kim & Rima McKinzey
Subject: pron question

Gee, I love this list.

Thanks to all of you who have responded both to me personally and to the
list (and to those of you who are meaning to, really). I've gotten 15
responses thus far and not a single one had any schwafulness (if you will).
These adverbial forms are rarely pron'd in dictionaries - as they are
usually runons.

Rima