Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 08:27:32 -0500

From: "Dennis R. Preston" preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PILOT.MSU.EDU

Subject: Re: toboggan



Jim Stalker is right on about the 'tobaggon' business in KY (at least

Louisville area). I'm not sure if my use was idiosyncratic, but for me

(growing up in the same place at roughly the same time), a 'tobaggon'

additionally required an elongated top, with, perhaps, the prototypical

form having a fuzzy ball on the end. I had no term for 'knit cap' till I

was blown north in the 60's.

Perhaps we had names for only the cartoonish forms of this outerwear down

in Louisville since, unlike here in East Lansing, we didn't need the damn

things so often

Dennis 'Cold-ears' Preston

preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu



Students from Toledo OH and Michiganders use this term for a knit cap.



Not Michiganders from the East Lansing area. I grew up in KY in the 50s using

this term as the usual name for a knit cap (a term I never used until I lived

in Michigan). I check the term regularly with my students, and none have ever

heard it in the meaning 'knit cap,' only as a sled. The OED gives tobaggon

cap

as US, with earliest example

from American Speech , V, 152, and two other examples, one from the Pacific

Spectator and one from the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer .



JCStalker

stalker[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu