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10-07-2014, 07:17 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Belmont MA
Posts: 4,802
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Mr. Grammarfuss is bewildered
Apologies to our friends from across the pond for this one. I will try to come up with a hedgehog question someday to balance it out.
I have been discussing a draft with my buddy Catherine Tufariello, and we are both unsure about what I had as "a opossum" because I don't pronounce the o. There is an argument for "An opossum" and there is an argument for cutting through the mess and dropping the "o" as Americans increasingly do, although I was taught in the Coolidge Administration that "possum" was unacceptable in a low class kind of way.
Uh, and no, it can't become a raccoon or wallaby.
Thoughts?
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10-07-2014, 07:28 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Iowa City, IA, USA
Posts: 10,104
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Mike, if you are not pronouncing the o in opossum, don't put it in there. You can use an apostrophe before 'possum to show that you know a letter and syllable have been dropped. But if you want to sound colloquial, then don't bother with the apostrophe. Have the courage of your colloquialism.
Susan
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10-07-2014, 07:57 PM
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Moderator
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Columbus, OH
Posts: 2,162
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Like Susan, I would simply drop the "o." If it was good enough for Eliot seventy-five years ago, it's good enough for me.
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10-07-2014, 08:11 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Saint Paul, MN
Posts: 9,656
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Here's a dictionary entry that recognizes "possum" as an alternate form of "opossum." The fact that there is such an entry suggests that "possum" is now standard enough to use without the apostrophe. That's what I'd do.
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10-07-2014, 08:41 PM
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Inside the Beltway
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Juster
I was taught in the Coolidge Administration that "possum" was unacceptable in a low class kind of way.
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I don't agree with much that Administration had to say, but in this one discrete case, they are perfectly correct. Possum is backwoods talk. If someone says it to me, I start looking around for the moonshine still. Source: I lived for several years in both Tennessee and Alabama. Them folks talk that way in those parts, bless their hearts.
Best,
Bill
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10-07-2014, 09:14 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Scio, Ohio
Posts: 540
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If I saw opossum in a poem I'd probably think it was a typo -- or just pretentious -- we have possums aplenty in Ohio and we had them in NY too -- both rural and urban; they are not particular
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10-07-2014, 11:01 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,365
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Psst, Maryann, the dictionary entry you found is for the Australian possum. A totally different animal, although still a marsupial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opossum
"They are also commonly called possums, particularly in the southern United States, although that term technically refers to Australian animals of the suborder Phalangeriformes."
Mike, I think if the context is clearly not Australia, either "a possum" or "an opossum" should be okay to use. If you want to say "possum," don't let the ghost of a snobby teacher dissuade you.
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10-08-2014, 04:49 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 14,175
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It might once have been backwoodsy, but I'd think it has credibility through the expression "playing possum". No one says "playing opossum".
Most of the American lingo was once regarded as backwoodsy, though words were actually relics of the English spoken by the early (English) settlers, conserved by long use by immigrants of other languages, or conserved by isolation.
Quote:
Them folks talk that way in those parts, bless their hearts.
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Only a yankee ignoramus would string all that indiscriminantly into one sentence.
Last edited by Janice D. Soderling; 10-08-2014 at 09:15 AM.
Reason: A friendly smiley seemed to be necessary to indicate Yoke, Yoke.
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10-08-2014, 05:50 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Old South Wales (UK)
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Alas, the word is, for me, inextricably bound up with my reverence for a truly great lady.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmTHPfvr1ow
.
Last edited by Ann Drysdale; 10-08-2014 at 10:08 AM.
Reason: Edit? What edit?
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10-08-2014, 07:38 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: oy of the storm
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Oh Ann, yes yes, ullo all you lovely possums! A PURRfickly respeckable word if ever there was one.
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