Argh the English Language, Part LXVII

[BwanaBob]

@Treppenwitz

Returning briefly to ough - there’s a fine Dave Gorman joke in which he recounts looking at a hoarding on the site of the new Loughborough University London Campus. For those that don’t know, Loughborough University the UK’s foremost student athlete establishment, and is pronounced Luff-Burra. As he is standing there, Gorman is asked by a passing, puzzled American tourist: how do you say that? to which he replies: Low-Brow.

Nitpick-ish: strictly autoantonyms. Looking at this list, same pronunciation appears to be the norm. My fave (not on the list) is Horrorshow, now used to mean something awful, but invented by Anthony Burgess to mean good.

j

Burgess didn’t invent it; he just anglicized the Russian word.

[Treppenwitz]

@JohnGalt

“After my mother had to slough an ace and lost the card game, she went down to the slough to look at the ducks.”

(Although my mother would spell them sluff and slue or slew)

Is that the slough in Slough?

j