today's deep thought
Why is it spelled 'fridge' when it's short for 'refrigerator'?
Whose idea was that utterly useless 'D'?
posted by miss.nicola @ 11:12 a.m.
6 comments
what's that smell?
"Dogs and women, they smile and lick you all over and roll on their backs, and the next thing you know they've offed something in the woods."
May 24, 2006
Whose idea was that utterly useless 'D'?
6 Comments:
And what's the deal with the Swiss living in Switzerland?
And how about calling a guy named Richard Dick for short, I mean really, what's the relationship there?
There once was a young man named Dick,
who came from the land of the Switz,
his real name was Richard,
for his job he sold fridgers,
and no one can figure out why the fuck things are shortened they way that they are, I mean, none of these make any sense at all, no wonder English is one of the most complicated languages to use, we'll just throw in an extra "D" and another "S" and well turn your name into something completely different than it orignially was, FRICK!
Most contractions occur orally. The spelling comes later. Without the 'd', fridge would be pronounced 'fryge'. Fridge is a phonetic spelling of the oral contraction. Make sense?
With names, you see the strange short forms happening with older names. I'm sure there's a historical reason for it. The short forms were probably in use long before English spelling became standardized.
There are lots of other examples. 'Betty' is short for Elizabeth. 'Bill' is short for William. 'Bob' is short for Robert. Henry is shorted to 'Hal' or 'Hank.' Catherine becomes 'Kate.'
It's not just English, either. Russian has wierd short forms for names. It makes it confusing if you're reading Russian literature. For example, 'Sasha' is short for Alexander, 'Misha' is short for Mikhail, Mary becomes 'Masha', Nikolai becomes 'Kolya' and Fyodor is shortened to 'Fedya.'
Oh, and here's an even wierder one. The short form of 'father' is 'dad.' I'll bet some infantile mind came up with that one.
Wow. Chet's a nice name. Short for anything?
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