Friday, February 1, 2013

Exchanging Vowels

Harvard has created what it calls a "labrary", its way of describing what a library will look like in the future. Apparently it is a descendant of the word "laboratory". Other substitute vowels don't form  neologisms so eloquently. Nothing fits "lebrary," barring an attempt at a construction in French (as in "Monsieur Le Brary"). On the other hand, going by the Oxford English Dictionary the "lob" part in an hypothesized "lobrary" has numerous meanings; for example, when "lob" signifies a "country bumpkin" it suggests a "lobrary" is a collection of reading material dealing with rural matters. An oversize, sprawling collection of items with simple words and lots of pictures fits a "lubbary" (from "lubber" as defined by the OED: a "big, clumsy, stupid fellow").

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