Timeline for Proper use of the word "lousy"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
7 events
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| Feb 15, 2011 at 6:35 | history | edited | Benjol | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 32 characters in body
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| Feb 15, 2011 at 0:07 | comment | added | Ian Henry | @PLL - No, I'm not sure. That was based on a thoroughly nonscientific poll consisting of me and a friend. Thinking about it after the fact I think my reasoning is that lice - louse - lousy should be pronounced to rhyme with mice - mouse - mousy, but honestly I'm not sure I've ever heard the word spoken (and I live in Austin, with no shortage of lousy hippies). | |
| Feb 14, 2011 at 18:07 | comment | added | PLL | @Ian: are you sure? As I understand, the original sense is also pronounced with a /z/ — or at least, it was when it was in more common use. The OED only lists this pronunciation; also, somewhere in the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Pairie series, a girl named Eliza Jane who’s had headlice gets taunted with “Lazy, lousy, Lizy Jane”, which strongly suggests they used /z/ in the 19th-century Midwest… If lousy gets pronounced with /s/ these days, I’d imagine this is a spelling pronunciation, arising just since the literal sense fell out of common use. | |
| Feb 14, 2011 at 8:19 | history | edited | Benjol | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
Integrate @Ian's comment
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| Feb 14, 2011 at 8:16 | comment | added | Benjol | @Ian, good point. I wonder if that's the case on both sides of the Atlantic? | |
| Feb 14, 2011 at 8:15 | comment | added | Ian Henry | I think the word is pronounced with an unvoiced s sound when it means lice-infested, to match louse (the singular of lice), but with a voiced z for the more common meaning. That way it's not ambiguous when you speak, but doesn't help reading. | |
| Feb 14, 2011 at 5:49 | history | answered | Benjol | CC BY-SA 2.5 |