barbed wire » bobwire

Classification: English – final d/t-deletion – /r/-dropping

Spotted in the wild:

  • A dandelion
    stretches in the warm sunlight
    by the bobwire fence (link)
  • Dorothy Zinke Roberts as a little girl would walk over the fields with her brothers and sisters to go to school. On the way, they had to crawl under a bobwire fence and Dorothy would purposely tear any dress she didn’t like on that bobwire fence so as not to have to wear it again. (link)
  • Here I go again with the dang flagging of the bobwire. (We have to have bobwire because of the cows). (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

The author of the poem cited above explains:

> […] all I ever heard growing up was “bobwire”. I’m sure that’s hillbilly talk and it’s the only word I knew for barbed wire until I was grown [… ]

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/10 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by Dale , 2005/03/07 at 4:54 pm

    During my Freshman year of college, I wrote an essay where I used the term “bob war” thinking it was the correct name. This was not good for a boy who grew up in North Carolina but was going to school in Massachusetts. My English prof never let me live it down. . .

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