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Nils & Araceli’s home on the web, est. 2003

9  07 2004

Words of a feather

Last night I came up with three new entries for my archive of autonyms: ‘shibboleth,’ ‘drawl,’ and “lithp.” I also thought of a new contranym: ‘plebeian.’ Each of these is in some way related to socilinguistic boundaries. end of entry


culture, language, projects

2 Responses to “Words of a feather”

  1. Mike, Said:
    on July 11th, 2004 at 4:03 pm


    ‘Lollapalooza’ is my favorite historical shibboleth. Though there are a lot of more pedestrian examples in the US today. I especially think of borrowed place names which have taken on a dialectic pronunciation. Cairo, Illinois; Edinburg, Texas; Moscow, Ohio.

  2. Nils, Said:
    on July 12th, 2004 at 8:32 am


    Geographical shibboleths are everywhere! As a fellow Ohioan, you’ll appreciate Nankin and Pekin, Ohio. Then there’s Paris, Texas and Venice, California. I suppose these are all exonyms, and not necessarily shibboleths per se.

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