[Michael Juster]

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?

[Susan McLean]

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

[E. Shaun Russell]

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.

[Maryann Corbett]

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.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Michael Juster

I was taught in the Coolidge Administration that "possum" was unacceptable in a low class kind of way.

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

[Sharon Fish Mooney]

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

[Julie Steiner]

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.

[Janice D. Soderling]

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.

Them folks talk that way in those parts, bless their hearts.

Only a yankee ignoramus would string all that indiscriminantly into one sentence.

[Ann Drysdale]

Alas, the word is, for me, inextricably bound up with my reverence for a truly great lady.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmTHPfvr1ow


.

[Seree Zohar]

Oh Ann, yes yes, ullo all you lovely possums! A PURRfickly respeckable word if ever there was one.