Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 10:01:14 -0800
From: Michael Andre-Driussi 
Subject: (urth) PEACE: oh wabe the wabing wabe

>>  >----------------------
>>  >The grass plot round a sundial ... because it goes a long way before it,
>>>and a long way behind it ... and a long way beyond it on each side.
>>>-----------------------
>>>
>>>This is word play. The sound of the word "way" is combined with the sound
>>>of the common first letter of "before," "behind" and "beyond" to produce
>>>the word "wabe." (My apologies to everyone who already understood this
>>>perfectly.)
>>
>>Hey, does this mean it is pronounced "WAY-bee," to rhyme with "baby"?  I
>>thought it was "WAYB" to rhyme with "babe"!
>
>"WAYB" is, of course, the canonical pronunciation. Considering that I
>made a special effort to phrase my explanation above in such a way as
>to prevent anyone reading it from arriving at "WAY-bee," the depth of
>my failure is all the more humiliating. 

No, William, the fault is mine and I knew it shortly after I posted the
WAY-bee note.  I had taken the LC quote as leaning on the BEE-fore and
BEE-hind, when in fact for all I know his pronunciation was "buh" or "b'";
I compounded my error by misreading your gloss on the "sound" of the common
first letter ("b'") as the "name" of the common first letter ("bee").
Wonderland tries to teach us the difference between names and what a thing
is called (or in this case, names and what a letter "says"), etc., but I
often mix them up.

I was hoping that the whole thing would pass without further comment, but
now I welcome the opportunity to make my apology.

=mantis=

"There's a vorpal bunny chomping on my wabe!"



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