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From Rivka Weinberg:
Thanks for the plaudit and yes, we do mean vegetable to be understood in the "more common, non-scientific" way as that is the only known usage for vegetable as a noun. As to your question which begins "Is it not true...?" Well, you got the fruit part right but no one calls a "vegetative portion of a plant" a "vegetable" - even botanists. |
From Vivien Dostine:
Nope. There is absolutely no evidence for your derivation and no occurrences of "tea-totaller" in the written record. It might sound logical to you, but logic is not all that is required to establish a term's etymology. Go back and read the discussion again - that's the best explanation, given the evidence, for the derivation of teetotaler. |
From Alex Dow:
Haha, that's a funny one! |
From Erica Hruby:
Thanks, Erica! Happy new year to you and all of our readers. Perhaps an explanation is due: the holidays almost always prevent us from publishing regularly, as our long-time readers know. Then, once the holidays were over, Melanie had to go out of town on an extended business trip (only home on weekends) through the end of February! That didn't leave any time to publish, so here we are, now that Melanie is back home. It's great to be back [she says!]. |
From Michael Cole:
Thanks Mike. |
From J. Alderton:
We've visited your site before, and we can't for the life of us figure out why we haven't linked to you until now! |
From Birger Drake:
Wow, that is a great resource, Birger. Thank you! |
We received an interesting piece of mail about trying to get a new word accepted into English (the word is viagry, an adjective formed from Viagra), and in that message was the following link: http://www.etymonline.com/ . If it is not the only online etymological dictionary, it is one of the few. Check it out. |
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Last Updated 03/10/03 07:21 PM