A White Sox or a White Sock?
A linguistic oddity question today:
Is it more correct to say, "Frank Thomas is no longer a White Sock" or "Frank Thomas is no longer a White Sox"?
The x poses a puzzling problem, because it is not an orthodox way of pluralizing a word, so is it truly a plural equal to "socks"? If it isn't a plural of sock, then can you have A White Sox? It is different from other teams, such as the Cubs, Cardinals, Dodgers, Yankees, etc., where you can clearly have a Cub, a Cardinal, a Dodger, and a Yankee.
The best part of this question is that I made another teacher laugh for 5 minutes just by asking it.
In an effort to get my kids interested in linguistic fun, we started 5th hour talking about this today, but my resident Sox fans couldn't give me a definitive answer. Any opinions?
Also seen recently in the Chicago Tribune: "Woman Sentenced to 20 Years in Death"
posted by KBush @ 10:52 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Hey, KFrazzle,
I didn't know you had a blog until you sent that email. I have to respond to this post because of its pertinence to me as a Red Sox fan. I'm surprised you didn't do the following already, especially since you're the one who showed it to me: I checked the venerable OED. "Sox" is the "commercial and informal spelling of 'socks.'" Therefore, since the singular of "sox" is "sock," a team member would be a Red Sock (or a White Sock, since you seem to prefer Chicago). QED by the OED (although "Red Sock" looks pretty stupid).
&rew P.
See, that's what I've decided. Either way, it looks stupid. Oh, well, that's what you get for being fans of the wrong team...
It's not just the Sox teams - how about the Cincinatti Reds? Is one of them just a Red? Or worse yet, if you're a basketball fan of the Miami Heat? What's only one of those? A Hot Spot? A Heater?
And it's not just sports - what if you're a fan of the singing group Point of Grace - what's one of those?
Bands and teams need to have more consideration of the people who want to pull them apart and make their names easily singularized. Also, is Dan Haseltine a "Jar of Clay"? (By the way, I think that yes, you can have a Red (it's short for Cincinnati "Redlegs" and they actually have a mascot named "Mr. Red"), but I'm not quite sure what to do with the heat...perhaps we call one of them a BTU.
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