Salt Lake Telegram | 1948-05-13 | Page 16 | Take My Word for It

TAKE MY WORD FOR IT By Frank Colby WHAT IS THE TIlE ORIGIN Charles B. B Driscoll in one of his good columns recently had this Item Miss Florence Rubner Rubner Rub- Rub Rubner ner Erie Pa quotes from Speech Tycoon Frank Colby the opinion that Image is a corruption of spittoon image meaning the reflection one used to get from the highly polished brass spittoon Im I'm glad to be mentioned by Columnist Driscoll but his Erie correspondent told only part of ot the story which she got from one of my books for the spittoon spittoon spittoon spit toon theory has never been mentioned in my column Here i Is the complete article from my book on speech One theory which has been found to be erroneous is that image is a southern Negro corruption of spirit and image A A writer whose name is now forgotten n advanced this artful explanation image Is nothing but a mispronunciation of spittoon image that is the reduced but faithful reflection one sees in the side ide of a clean bright spittoon s p pit i t t too o o n all an newly polished So much for the book I 1 may add however that spit image also occurs frequently especially in southern speech And it maybe maybe may maybe be the more accurate version from a historical standpoint for forthe forthe forthe the original word for spit in Old English was wa image could easily have developed developed developed devel devel- into either spit and Image or image This however is my conjecture and not an authenticated theory Copyright Bell Ben Syndicate Inc m