>Here're a couple of instances then:
> Rubber boots (everyone)
> Wellington, Wellington Boots, Wellies (British)
> Gumboots (Australian -- "Neighbours") 8)
> Torch (British)
> Flashlight (American)
>Oh, and judging from the number of posts here and e-mails I've had, `furlongs
>per fortnight' may well be the basis for the entire American culture.
Actually, what I think you found out is that there is one, and only one,
surviving popular use of the word "fortnight" in the American on-line
subculture. (Evidently the same goes for "furlong".)
To segue into another barely-on-topic contest, are there any other words
that have one and only one popular usage? For example, I have never heard
the word "extenuating" unless it was immediately followed by "circumstances".
In other words, "extenuating circumstances" is a kind of compound word.
I try to take advantage of this kind of thing in Archetype's parser, along
with some other "statistical linguistics" techniques.
I can think of some others that come close. "Unforseeable" is almost always
followed by "future". "Ne'er" is always followed by "do well", unless
you're looking at hymn lyrics. There is a kind of pattern here where
borderline archaic words survive in compound phrases which describe something
common. Sometimes you hear people use the word "ye", but only when followed
by "olde", to mean (in a comical, eccentric way), "venerable or antique",
as in, "I'm going to boot ye olde computer now." And is "blithering"
ever followed by anything but "idiot"?
What I'm getting at is that these words ("extenuating", "ne'er", "ye",
"blithering", etc.) are starting to take on the role of the "faux" in
"faux pas" or the "quid" in "quid pro quo": because of their increasing
obsolesence, they act more like borrowed words from another language.
In the same way, we Americans can no longer think of any way to use
"furlong" or "fortnight" except in that joke.
--Derek
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Derek Jones dtj@primenet.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------