Word: laffs
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Dates: during 1877-1877
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...vowel o, manifest a decided aversion to the broad a (as in father), with an inclination to make the r painfully distinct. Untrammelled by dictionaries, both pronounce such words as aunt, haunt, daunt, cant, etc., ant, hant, dant, cant, while half and laugh are emasculated into haff and laff. Iron, which authority allows us to charitably call iurn, is contorted into the unnecessarily painful irrun. The South, notwithstanding its fondness for calling party pawty, manages by some inscrutable means to satisfy its orthoepical conscience in mutilating palm, calm, psalm into pam, cam, psam, and beer, tear, steer into bare, tare...
...invariably parst, farst, larst, only the r is not distinct. Whether he is right in saying demand, command, castle, example, I won't undertake to decide; he certainly has much authority on his side. Perhaps, however, the safest way to shun the extremities represented by the Western haff and laff and the Yankee's parst and larst is to follow the medio tutissimus ibis rule of Ovid...