Citations:ghoti

English citations of ghoti

fish

					1874	1938 1946 1949 1953 1959 1962 1965 1966 1970 1973 1978 1983 1996	2004 2006 2007 2009 2010
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• 1874 October, S. R. Townshend Mayer, quoting Charles Ollier, “Leigh Hunt and Charles Ollier”, in The St. James's Magazine and United Empire Review, volume 14, page 406:

  My son William has hit upon a new method of spelling Fish. As thus:—G.h.o.t.i. Ghoti, fish. Nonsense! say you. By no means, say I. It is perfectly vindicable orthography. You give it up? Well then, here is the proof. Gh is f, as in tough, rough, enough; o is i as in women; and ti is sh, as in mention, attention, &c. So that ghoti is fish.

• 1938 August 27, “In Lighter Vein”, in Christian Science Monitor‎^[1], →ISSN, page 17:

  A foreigner who insisted that "fish" should be spelled "ghoti" explained it in this fashion: "Gh" is pronounced as in "rough," the "o" as in "women," and the "ti" as in "nation" — so maybe he's right.

• 1946 April, Mario A. Pei, “Some Comments on Spelling Reform”, in American Speech, volume 21, number 2, →JSTOR, page 130:

  In English, on the contrary, each word is a law unto itself. Shaw upholds 'ghoti' as a possible spelling for 'fish,' on the ground that we can use the gh of 'enough,' the o of 'women' and the ti of 'nation';...

• 1949 March 21, “No Ghoti Today”, in Time‎^[2], volume 53, number 12, →ISSN, page 36:

  One of these, of course, was G. B. Shaw, who long ago had pointed out that under the present system the word "fish" might just as well be spelled GHOTI; GH as in enough, O as in women, TI as in nation. GH-O-TI = fish.

• 1953 August, “Paris Postscript”, in The Rotarian, volume 83, number 2, page 40:

  Ghoti. That spells fish — if we correctly heard a little international group of Rotarians who were discussing peculiarities of the English tongue at a sidewalk cafe.

• 1959 July, “Word Games”, in Changing Times: The Kiplinger's Magazine, page 46:

  Spelling bee. You can play this in teams if you like. First team offers the word ghoti. What does it spell? Answer: fish—gh as in rough, o as in women, ti as in nation.

• 1962 January, Jacob Ornstein, “English the Global Way”, in The Modern Language Journal, volume 46, number 1, →JSTOR, page 12:

  To indicate the inconsistencies of English spelling, linguists like to cite constructs such as ghoti.

• 1965 March, John Algeo, “Why Johnny Can’t Spell”, in The English Journal, volume 54, number 3, →JSTOR, page 211:

  G. B. Shaw’s well known suggestion that English spelling habits would allow ghoti for fish gains much of its humor from the fact that the vowel is a unique spelling and the consonants are positional variants misused.

• 1966 October 19, “An Egg Grows in Gotham” (13 min), in Batman, season 2, episode 13, spoken by Batman and Robin (Adam West and Burt Ward), via ABC:

  Batman: [removing card from the Batfile] Look at this. A new egg firm has just opened on Point View Street.

  Robin: "The Ghoti [pronouncing it "go tie"] Oeufs Caviar Company". Oeufs means "eggs" in French, but I don't get this other word at all.

  Batman: The word is "ghoti" [pronouncing it "fish"], Robin.

  Robin: "Ghoti" ["go tie"] is "fish"?

  Batman: [writing GHOTI on blackboard] See here. English phonetics. [circling "GH" and writing "F" beneath] "GH" becomes "F" as in tough or laugh. [circling "O" and writing "I" beneath] "O" becomes "I" as in women. [circling "TI" and writing "SH" beneath] "TI" becomes "SH" as in ration or the word nation.

  Robin: Holy semantics, Batman! You never cease to amaze me!

• 1970 March, Ronald Wardhaugh, “An Evaluative Comparison of Present Methods for Teaching English Phonology”, in TESOL Quarterly, volume 4, number 1, →JSTOR, page 69:

  Moreover, the orthography of a language such as English is not as bad as people like George Bernard Shaw have made it out to be with such spellings as ghoti for fish.

• 1973 October, G. Howard Poteet, “A Brief Note on Spelling”, in The English Journal, volume 62, number 7, →JSTOR, page 1029:

  It is true that there seems to be little system to the apparent phonetic chaos which George Bernard Shaw once pointed out permits us to spell fish with the letters ghoti.

• 1978 December, Josephine Swanson, “Humanavioral Objectives for Exploring Language”, in The English Journal, volume 67, number 9, →JSTOR, page 26:

  Students will: […] 4. Put up, however, with the difficulties of English spelling and decide that Shaw's joke about ghoti isn't all that funny.

• 1983 November 3, Roy Herbert, “Not all red herrings are ghoti”, in New Scientist‎^[3], volume 100, number 1382, →ISSN, page 355:

• 1996 March-April, Martin Gardner, “Lion Hunting and Other Mathematical Pursuits: A Collection of Mathematics, Verse and Stories by Ralph P. Boas, Jr. by Gerald L. Alexanderson; Dale H. Mugler (review)”, in American Scientist, volume 84, number 2, →JSTOR, page 192:

  That "ghoti" spells "fish" is so well known that James Joyce mentions it in Finnegans Wake.

• 2004 February, Susan Landau, “Polynomials in the Nation's Service: Using Algebra to Design the Advanced Encryption Standard”, in The American Mathematical Monthly, volume 111, number 2, →JSTOR, page 90:

  In 1500 B.C.E., a Mesopotamian scribe used substitution of cuneiform signs that had differing syllabic interpretations (much as "ghoti" can be an alternate spelling of "fish") to disguise a formula for pottery glazes.

• 2006 November 11, “Revelling in the oddity of English”, in Townsville Bulletin, page 89:

  Are you eating enough 'ghoti' lately? Or pheesi, pfuchsi, ftiapsh or even maybe ueisci?

• 2007 September 28, Harry Bingham, “You say potato, I say ghoughbteighpteau”, in The Guardian‎^[4]:

  George Bernard Shaw once commented that English spelling would allow you to write FISH as GHOTI (f as in rough, i as in women, sh as in nation.) But he couldn't have been trying all that hard, if that was the best he came up with.

• 2009, Laxman Swaroop Singh, The Obsidian Eye: Cat Journeys Through an Impossible Universe: Cat Journeys Through an Impossible Universe‎^[5], Baltimore: PublishAmerica, →ISBN, →OL:

  I shivered when I heard the curse. I pissed in my dhoti like a frightened fish, a ghoti.

• 2009 October 6, Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, New York: Scribner, →ISBN, →OL, page 35:

  At the same time, Dad was working on a book arguing the case for phonetic spelling. He called it A Ghoti out of Water.

• 2010 June 27, Ben Zimmer, “Ghoti”, in The New York Times Magazine‎^[6], →ISSN, page MM14:

  When talk turns to the irrationality of English spelling conventions, a five-letter emblem of our language’s foolishness inevitably surfaces: ghoti.