Transcript of “Cutting Cots”
We had a conversation a while back about the pronunciation of that fruit that some people call apricot and some people call apricot. Well, we heard from Alec McLean, who grew up in the Santa Clara Valley long before it became Silicon Valley. And Alec says there are lots of orchards there.
And Alec maintains that the proper pronunciation of this fruit is cot. Oh, of course. Alec says all the kids in town had summer jobs cutting cots, that is slicing and pitting them to be dried. And he goes on to say, occasionally, if you were talking about the trees or the orchards, you would hear the whole word. But if you heard it with a short A, you knew you were listening to somebody who wasn’t originally from around there. Meaning that they all said apricot. Apricot was for outsiders.
I guess so. I don’t know what I say. I still don’t know even after that conversation we had. We’ve talked about this before. You and I, our speech is so messed up because we try things on all the time. Yes, we are just mutts.
Yeah, we’re too influenced by what we read and hear from others. Yeah, well I think cot is really handy. I’m just going to start saying that.
Yeah, can I have a few cots? Because you can have things like plum cots, which are crossbred.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah, so as a combining form, it already exists.
