Re: [romconlang] -able

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ph. D." <phil@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 4:32 PM
Subject: Re: [romconlang] -able


> Mark J. Reed WROTE:
>>
>> "Spade" is old US slang for a Black person.  I assume the original
>> source is the playing card suit. Oddly, in the context of playing
>> cards it never twigs anything for me, but outside of that context it
>> does.  Probably has a lot to do with the fact that "spade" just
>> doesn't exist IML outside of cards - certainly not as a name for the
>> tool, which has always been a "shovel" (despite the differences that
>> exist between the referents of those two words when used "properly").
>
> I believe it derives from "he's as black as the ace of spades."
>
> My parents and grandparents always referred to a small shovel as a spade,
> but it seems very rare among people my age (53) and younger. Perhaps it's
> more common among those who have a garden (for growing vegetables
> and flowers, not the British garden which may just be what we call a lawn,
> AIUI)
>
> --Ph. D.
Speaking as a Brit, with an upstate-New Yorker wife, I can report that lawn
is a lawn to both of us. However, everything else is utter confusion. What I
call a garden, she calls a yard, and what she calls a garden I would refer
to as a border, (flower-)bed or (vegetable-)patch.  From my point of view,
the meaning of yard isn't the whole thing, it is restricted purely to a
small paved area behind and immediately adjacent to the house, these days
more commonly refered to as the patio (to me 'yard' also conjures up very
small, inner-urban, crowded, concrete images, as opposed to large verdent,
suburban, gardens with a block-paved patio).

However, I do still sweep our patio with a yard-brush, so go figure.

P.

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