knudsen (12/03/82)
Related to "heightth" -- when I moved to Illinois from Penna, I was amused to hear people here refer to dry spells as a "droughth" (not drough-t-th), whereas back East it is just "drought". What differs from the "heighth" case (aside from dropping the 't') is that the newspapers out here SPELL it "droughth", or come to think of it, "drouth", which is certainly cleaner. I don't know if that spelling is restricted to newspaper headlines (where every letter counts) or whether you could pass it off in a U of Chi thesis. BTW, the derivation of "heighth" by analogy with other dimension words strikes me as not only correct, but in parallel with the fact that many people say "hisself" and "theirselves", which are naturally correct by analogy with myself, yourself, ourselves, etc. In fact, the 1st & 2nd person reflexives imply that a person owns his/her self, so there are 2 "reasons" (as if English cared!) why hisself & theirselves are correct. Did anyone find theirself objecting? Descended from the Danes, who stuck all those "gh" in English, mike k