barrow » barrel

Chiefly in:   wheel barrel

Classification: English – vocalized /l/

Spotted in the wild:

  • I got my wheel barrel and shovel out and was preparing to lay the gravel and the neighbors laughed at me. (Light blogging, heavy machinery, by Joi Ito)
  • Glue the wheels to both sides of the cup (open end facing up). The handle is the wheel barrel handle! Next, put dirt in the wheel barrel. Plant any flower you like (geraniums do well). Recycling is fun! (perpetualpreschool.com)

Analyzed or reported by:

Arnold Zwicky (see link above) refers to a discussion on ADS-L (04/08/11-12) and points out “the vocalization of [l] that would make barrel and barrow homophonous, or nearly so”.

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2004/12/04 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by Nilson Cain , 2004/12/06 at 7:34 am

    Logic always told me this!

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