Path: ...!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail
From: Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net>
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: /ru:m/ for Rome and the Gods of the Copybook Headings
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2024 13:34:09 +0100
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <87ed7u6dha.fsf@parhasard.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: individual.net um5MRRU2pdNgw2eVbU89gAWi2jcQcBNRo2R6xmbEKJLs/CLXEM
Cancel-Lock: sha1:pjotydyT6oAuc+RTcSbbuHBLzy4= sha1:N3aV8AHNTc3K5IdAuGDwVQAASpw= sha256:VvNj+4vEkAl1NxrSj2dHtQfzlgiJG7rAxoddf163Ots=
User-Agent: Gnus/5.101 (Gnus v5.10.10) XEmacs/21.5-b35 (Linux-aarch64)
Bytes: 1721


  “We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace.
   Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
   But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
   That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in
   Rome.”

The old pronunciation of <Rome> as /ruːm/ in English was mentioned on a
Languagehat thread the other day,
https://languagehat.com/war-words/#comment-4604383 . OED2 comments “The pron
(ruːm), indicated by the old spelling Room(e) and by the rime with doom etc. 
was retained by some educated speakers as late as the 19th cent.”

Kipling came out with it in 1919; I read the poem at intervals and this
interval happened to be shortly after the Languagehat thread.

-- 
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)