> Eek! Is that really true, Robin, or are you having me on?
Yah -- every word of it. (I'd give you chapter-and-verse, except I'm
cut-off [HOWL!!!!] from the OED at the moment.) I'm old enough to remember
when the circus-geek was the *only* meaning.
> I spent most of last night reading the Auchinleck Manuscript, a
> minority pursuit if ever there was one, after your and Tom's posts.
I'm trying to stick together a collection of URLs to scanned material --
mostly early printed texts. (The ideal here is the Early English Texts
Online, but it's commercial/password-protected.) If I ever get it together,
I'll post it. Or at least send it to Patrick.
> So if they link my dna with any bloodied chicken feathers it's all
> your faults.
If you want an example of extreme semantic cross-contamination, check out
the recent thread on "booger" on Buffalo Poetics. Now *that* was such a
right bugger that it would have made even a geek boke.
Robin
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