I suppose it *could *be parsed as “I went, with no name, through the dessert, on a horse.” Just about. If your mind works like that. But the title is Horse With No Name, which seems pretty clear.
Holy crap!! Nocturnally!
<shame> I just figured it was, like, 'knock turn", like, things that were… knobby… and stuff. </shame>
Anyway, obviously it’s a crappy pun, since nobody gets it.
I think the grammar nazi in me was born when I was about 8 years old and a fellow Boy Scout just could not be convinced that “rabbit” isn’t the adjective that goes with “rabies”. His bizarre cite was that ‘everyone knew’ that a rabbit with rabies was a “rabbit rabbit”.
Can’t you just show her the entry for “cobweb” in a dictionary?
Care to explain it for those of us who don’t watch South Park?
What? As a native Washingtonian myself (the small one, of course), I’m baffled that there are apparently people who think that DC is only big enough to hold the White House and the Capitol building.
I was explicitly taught as a kid that cobwebs are dusty dry things that build up in the corners of the inside of your house, and that spider webs are webs that can’t be described in that way.
I was also explicitly told, about many cobwebs, that they are just dust, not spider webs.
So I wonder if this might be a regional usage that has gone under the radar or something.
-FrL-
I find this usage attested in the OED:
Though the cites it gives afterwards don’t make it clear at all that a cobweb need not be a spider web.
-FrL-
Victoria Principal.
Kind of like the collegiate head named “Martin”.
Mine [del]is[/del] are a bit embarrassing, for someone who likes words as much as I claim to. I was in my thirties before I learned how to pronounce the word “debacle”. I was reading aloud to a visually impaired college professor, and when I came to the word, I pronounced it “DEB-ickle.” He kindly corrected me, tout de suite.
Also, I was in my late twenties before I stopped internally pronouncing “misled” as “MY-zeld” when I saw it in print. I mean, I knew the word; I even used it in conversation sometimes, but I never wrote it down, and when I saw it in print, I knew from context that the misled person had a form of impaired perception. It seemed to work well enough to get me through whatever narrative I was reading, but I never encountered it when I had a dictionary at hand, so I never looked it up. Then, one day, I just. . .noticed it.
The original post:
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Hey, folks, it was mostly a joke/whoosh. I thought it would be pretty obvious that it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. I know that some serious answers/opinions have been presented in this thread and my earlier ones had a serious intent but with a slant toward the pun or humor involved.
In this case, I heard that song in the background and had the brainstorm, “Hey, what if it’s the guy and not the horse that doesn’t have a name?” It didn’t occur to me that I would be taken as an unimpeachable source on this thing, and I would be quite surprised to learn that America had that in mind about the confusion somebody might have over whose name was missing.
In addition I thought the reference to H-O-R-S-E (basketball) or Charley Horse (leg cramp) would indicate I was funning.
So, my sincere apologies to at least these folks:
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Now, it’s going to be a real hoot if there really is something to what I posted about the song. If there’s some “official word” on the issue, I’d love to see it. I have always thought the song was one of those things that really didn’t have much objective meaning and was a dream sequence or a drug song or gibberish.
My bad!
For me it was when I was talking to someone about goal fever, that I found out that goal and jail are homophones.
How did you miss that, with all the emphasis on The Last Supper being a Passover celebration?
(bolding mine)No, “goal” is pronounced to rhyme with “foal” or “hole.” You’re thinking of “gaol,” I believe.
You’re right. :smack:
Vindicated!!!
…although gullible.
Thanks for those links.
I haven’t checked the links, but believe that Horse with No Name is about getting through a bad Heroin (aka: Horse) trip…
I been through the desert on a Horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert they can’t remember your name 'cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain…
That’s from memory - oy - but it sounds like a heroin trip to me…not that I would know first hand…
OMG, I always thought I was the only one in the world who thought that!
Matter of fact, even though I’ve known the “correct” pronunciation for many years now, I still think it just sounds wrong as de-BAK-ill.
I now feel vindicated. Or something 
:smack:
I didn’t know that until just reading this post.
:smack: I’m just going to curl up into a ball and weep now. I must have spent 20 minutes trying to figure out what you meant…“Is he dehydrated from his desert journey and cramping up? After basketball practice? But why’d he bring his horse to practice?”
My sympathies and apologies to you, too, for the unwarranted head-scratching. Maybe I should have added some Sarah Jessica Parker and Camilla Parker Bowles (Parker Sisters?) references. Maybe the horse’s real name is Sarah or Camilla and America was too embarrassed to use that and decided to avoid the name altogether because it was a stallion.
I suspect this horse is about to die…
Because it’s really easy to slam dunk when you’re on horseback (although dribbling’s much harder).