# PEACE: oh wabe the wabing wabe *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 30 Oct 2002* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Michael Andre-Driussi *30 Oct 2002, 18:01* >> >---------------------- >> >The grass plot round a sundial ... because it goes a long way before it, >> and a long way behind it ... and a long way beyond it on each side. >>> ----------------------- >>> >>> This is word play. The sound of the word "way" is combined with the sound >>> of the common first letter of "before," "behind" and "beyond" to produce >>> the word "wabe." (My apologies to everyone who already understood this >>> perfectly.) >> Hey, does this mean it is pronounced "WAY-bee," to rhyme with "baby"? I >> thought it was "WAYB" to rhyme with "babe"! > "WAYB" is, of course, the canonical pronunciation. Considering that I > made a special effort to phrase my explanation above in such a way as > to prevent anyone reading it from arriving at "WAY-bee," the depth of > my failure is all the more humiliating. No, William, the fault is mine and I knew it shortly after I posted the WAY-bee note. I had taken the LC quote as leaning on the BEE-fore and BEE-hind, when in fact for all I know his pronunciation was "buh" or "b'"; I compounded my error by misreading your gloss on the "sound" of the common first letter ("b'") as the "name" of the common first letter ("bee"). Wonderland tries to teach us the difference between names and what a thing is called (or in this case, names and what a letter "says"), etc., but I often mix them up. I was hoping that the whole thing would pass without further comment, but now I welcome the opportunity to make my apology. =mantis= "There's a vorpal bunny chomping on my wabe!" ---