Innovative Usage Thread

[vlad]

Are there people who say [bʊf] for "boof", [fʊf] for "foof", [pʊf] for "poof", or [lʊfə] for "loofah"?

Australian English has /bʊf/ "clumsy/stupid person" and /pʊf/ "gay man", but those probably aren't the words you have in mind.

[Imralu]

I just noticed this, because both words appeared in the same Metafilter post, from two different people:

cronch (for crunch)
monch (for munch)

Both applied to dogs. Interesting sound symbolism here... usually a more open vowel is less cute, not more so.

In my dialect, they conform to the rule.
[kʰɹänt͡͡ʃ] → [kʰɹɔnt͡͡ʃ]
[mänt͡͡ʃ] → [mɔnt͡͡ʃ]

[Travis B.]

I just noticed this, because both words appeared in the same Metafilter post, from two different people:

cronch (for crunch)
monch (for munch)

Both applied to dogs. Interesting sound symbolism here... usually a more open vowel is less cute, not more so.

I can't decide how cronch and monch are to be pronounced - the could have either -[ɒ̃ʔtʃ] or -[ãʔtʃ] based on the spelling to me.

[KathTheDragon]

/-ɒntʃ/ [-ɔntʃ] for me.

[zyxw59]

"The specific details of what need to be done are something I have not fully fledged out yet"

presumably a conflation of "fleshed out" and "fully fledged"

[Nortaneous]

Are there people who say [bʊf] for "boof", [fʊf] for "foof", [pʊf] for "poof", or [lʊfə] for "loofah"?

Australian English has /bʊf/ "clumsy/stupid person" and /pʊf/ "gay man", but those probably aren't the words you have in mind.

/buːf/ "to administer rectally", /puːfi/ "large, billowing (of clothing)"

[äreo]

Someone may have mentioned this before, but I just realized that on does a lot of interesting things in phrasal verbs that could be said to verge on a kind of partitive, atelic, or iterative function. We can work on a project or live on X number of dollars a month.

But where it's really stood out to me is when it comes to verbs of consumption. We can say we sip on a drink or nibble on a snack and those are common enough--but lately I've heard and used eat on to mean "eat part of," as in I make a big batch of chili and then I can eat on it for a few days. I could even see myself generalizing this to say something like I found this cool piano piece and I've been practicing on it for a while.

[Travis B.]

Someone may have mentioned this before, but I just realized that on does a lot of interesting things in phrasal verbs that could be said to verge on a kind of partitive, atelic, or iterative function. We can work on a project or live on X number of dollars a month.

But where it's really stood out to me is when it comes to verbs of consumption. We can say we sip on a drink or nibble on a snack and those are common enough--but lately I've heard and used eat on to mean "eat part of," as in I make a big batch of chili and then I can eat on it for a few days. I could even see myself generalizing this to say something like I found this cool piano piece and I've been practicing on it for a while.

Eat on here is probably by analogy with live on, e.g. "He lives on the money he makes developing software."

[foxcatdog]

Someone may have mentioned this before, but I just realized that on does a lot of interesting things in phrasal verbs that could be said to verge on a kind of partitive, atelic, or iterative function. We can work on a project or live on X number of dollars a month.

But where it's really stood out to me is when it comes to verbs of consumption. We can say we sip on a drink or nibble on a snack and those are common enough--but lately I've heard and used eat on to mean "eat part of," as in I make a big batch of chili and then I can eat on it for a few days. I could even see myself generalizing this to say something like I found this cool piano piece and I've been practicing on it for a while.

Just seems like a continuation of eat on. Probably i think "with" would be more appropriate so i will steal that for Amarin.

[bradrn]

Someone may have mentioned this before, but I just realized that on does a lot of interesting things in phrasal verbs that could be said to verge on a kind of partitive, atelic, or iterative function. We can work on a project or live on X number of dollars a month.

But where it's really stood out to me is when it comes to verbs of consumption. We can say we sip on a drink or nibble on a snack and those are common enough--but lately I've heard and used eat on to mean "eat part of," as in I make a big batch of chili and then I can eat on it for a few days. I could even see myself generalizing this to say something like I found this cool piano piece and I've been practicing on it for a while.

'Practice on' is already pretty standard, I feel. But I agree with Travis on 'live on' vs 'eat on' (the latter of which I've never heard myself).

[äreo]

Now that I think about it more, eat off is also something I've heard and said, probably even more than eat on. This also fits with a pretty common pattern, where off and on form more or less equivalent phrasal verbs. You can live on or live off a given income, and (at least in my idiolect/local speech) you can eat on or eat off Thanksgiving leftovers for a few days.

[foxcatdog]

eat on sounds acceptable to me but not eat off but live on and live off both sound acceptable

[Man in Space]

Are there people who say [bʊf] for "boof", [fʊf] for "foof", [pʊf] for "poof", or [lʊfə] for "loofah"?

Australian English has /bʊf/ "clumsy/stupid person" and /pʊf/ "gay man", but those probably aren't the words you have in mind.

/buːf/ "to administer rectally", /puːfi/ "large, billowing (of clothing)"

Boof ‘to use marijuana in inhalant form (instance as opposed to habit); marijuana so administered’ (I despise this word because the person I heard it from fundamentally annoys me), poof ‘puff of vapor; to disappear, leaving such a trace behind’

[KathTheDragon]

Eat on here is probably by analogy with live on, e.g. "He lives on the money he makes developing software."

I would've assumed it would be by analogy to feed on and graze on.

[Travis B.]

Eat on here is probably by analogy with live on, e.g. "He lives on the money he makes developing software."

I would've assumed it would be by analogy to feed on and graze on.

I read eat on differently from feed on or graze on here, e.g. you can say "The rabbits like to feed on (or graze on) our tomato plants" but ?"The rabbits like to eat on our tomato plants" sounds funny to me, whereas "We can eat on the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving for a few days afterwards" sounds fine to me.

[äreo]

Eat on here is probably by analogy with live on, e.g. "He lives on the money he makes developing software."

I would've assumed it would be by analogy to feed on and graze on.

I read eat on differently from feed on or graze on here, e.g. you can say "The rabbits like to feed on (or graze on) our tomato plants" but ?"The rabbits like to eat on our tomato plants" sounds funny to me, whereas "We can eat on the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving for a few days afterwards" sounds fine to me.

Yeah, the latter is more the usage I'm talking about, although the former doesn't sound all that strange to me.

[KathTheDragon]

Eat on here is probably by analogy with live on, e.g. "He lives on the money he makes developing software."

I would've assumed it would be by analogy to feed on and graze on.

I read eat on differently from feed on or graze on here, e.g. you can say "The rabbits like to feed on (or graze on) our tomato plants" but ?"The rabbits like to eat on our tomato plants" sounds funny to me, whereas "We can eat on the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving for a few days afterwards" sounds fine to me.

That shouldn't matter for the analogy.

[bradrn]

Reviving this thread, here’s a rather interesting example of analogy:

JH Conway used a different technique which I have swutch to when computing days in the current year.

[Darren]

English strong verbs have a surprising tendency to trigger analogy, despite being highly irregular themselves (I think there's probably about forty synchronic "ablaut" patterns). I have read somewhere that verbs reached (rought?) peak regularity in the 11th century and since then more weak verbs have analogised (analogose?) to become strong than the other way round.

I like to slip fake strong verbs into conversation and see if anyone notices – generally they're accepted without comment. In a similar vein you can add redundant -en onto strong verbs without sounding too far of (tooken, gotten, putten, and so on)

[Nortaneous]

In a similar vein you can add redundant -en onto strong verbs without sounding too far of ( ... gotten,

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