Forgotten English

[javasaurus]

Yep, I'm referring to my page-a-day calendar.

And you thought Quayle spelled "potato" wrong...
The history blurb on yesterday's page said:

On this date in 1750, Lord Chesterfield stressed the importance of proper spelling to his son Philip: "Orthography is so absolutely necessary for a man of letters or a gentleman, that one false spelling may fix a ridicule upon him for the rest of his life; and I know a man of quality who never recovered the ridicule of having spelled wholesome without the w." Long before American Vice-President Dan Quayle's notorious spelling mishap, William Walsh's Book of Literary Curiosities (1900) reported on a Dr. Wayland of Philadelphia, who once asked rhetorically, "What does ghoughphtheightteeau spell? Well, according to the following rules, it spells potato. Gh stands for p, as in the last letters of hiccough; ough for o, as in dough; phth for t, as in phthisis; eigh stands for a, as in neighbor; tte stands for t, as in gazzette; and eau stands for o, as in beau. Thus you have p-o-t-a-t-o."


The word of the day, by the way, was "grabble," for which the definition is, "In digging potatoes, to remove large ones without disturbing the small."

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

"Its a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word." -- Andrew Jackson

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

My favorite veggie, the ghoughphtheightteeau! Must remember that spelling; my mom has that on a printup somewhere. Actually, it's a ... ditto, I think they're called -- the purple uber-cheap things from the early to mid 80s.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

How about ghoti, pronounced "fish." The gh is from laughing, the o is from women, and the ti from locomotion.

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Ditto's one name... better one was... (um, spelling questionable) Mimeograph.

Evil purple things.. and IIRC they showed up in the 70s, I swear I remember them from Elementary school.

And no, they haven't gone away... I know of at least 2 schools who still use them in the area (admittedly one is in Baltimore, but...). *g* And yes, I still remember how to set them up and get them going.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

When I was teaching math at UMd, we were asked to use mimeos because they were much cheaper than photocopies. With the proper settings, they produce wonderful copies, but getting those settings is a nightmare, and they change based on the original.

The advantage to us was that if we used the photocopier, we had to enter a code, and our group was charged for the copies. Mimeographing was free (to the group).

[cozit.livejournal.com]

*g* I've been convinced that since it was cheaper they encouraged it... not to mention that if it finally broke down under "normal" use they'd finally have an excuse to replace it with more modern equipment.

Something about the thwap, thwap of the mimeo is more mesmorizing than a copier, too...