An old One Big Happy cartoon that’s been sitting on my desktop for some time: casual speech collides with dialectal variation to confound Ruthie’s grandfather (usually it’s Ruthie who misunderstands, but not this time):
(#1) What Ruthie has that her grandfather lacks is inside knowledge: experience with the speaker and how she talks
Ok, first the linguistics, then the frills. On the principle that a spoonful of linguistics helps the ruffles, sharks, and lizards go down.
frill ‘for real’. First, the casual speech thing. What to do with for real.
— in hyperarticulated speech (as in reading series of disconnected words off a page, or painfully lining out the words in the phrase for someone who just doesn’t get it): [fɔr ríl]
— in ordinary connected speech: [fɔríl] or more relaxed [fǝríl]
— in casual speech: reduced to [fríl]
Second, the dialect thing: [rɪl] as a (dialectal) variant of [ril] (the fill –– feel merger, of /i/and /ɪ/ before /l/, especially prevalent in Southern American English, but found elsewhere as well).
Put them together, and you get frill ‘for real’.
Lexicography. From NOAD:
1 [a] [AZ: a ruffle or furbelow] a strip of gathered or pleated material sewn by one side onto a garment or larger piece of material as a decorative edging or ornament. [b] a thing resembling a frill in appearance or function: a frill of silver hair surrounded a shining bald pate. [c] a natural fringe of feathers or hair on a bird or other animal. [d] an upward-curving bony plate extending behind the skull of many ceratopsian dinosaurs. 2 (usually frills) an unnecessary extra feature or embellishment: it was just a comfortable apartment with no frills. [AZ: or 3 ear-spelling of the Cockney variant of thrill, as in Bein’ wif ya is a frill]
So much for linguistics; now come the frills. Maxi frills (sense 1a). Minimal frills (sense 2). And bestial frills (in the sense 1b / 1c zone).
Frilly clothing. Not your basic little black dress, but a slinky number in which the ruffles have frills:
(#2) The Abercrombie & Fitch Cascading Ruffle Maxi Dress, in black (also available in pink and blue)
No-frills food.
(#3) At the No Frills Diner in Ogden UT
Frilled creatures. Fats Domino found his thrill on Blueberry Hill, but I found my frill on the lizard shark’s gill. While the frilled dragon played on. (Here it will be useful to know the Ancient Greek combining form chlamydo- (χλαμύς), ‘cloaked, mantled’ (hence ‘frilled’).)
— the frilled shark; from Wikipedia:
(#4) Chlamydoselachus anguineus (from the Shark Research Institute site)The frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus), also known as the lizard shark, is one of the two extant species of shark in the family Chlamydoselachidae (the other is the southern African frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus africana)). The frilled shark is considered a living fossil, because of its primitive, anguilliform (eel-like) physical traits, such as a dark-brown color, amphistyly (the articulation of the jaws to the cranium), and a 2.0 m (6.6 ft)–long body, which has dorsal, pelvic, and anal fins located towards the tail. The common name, frilled shark, derives from the fringed appearance of the six pairs of gill slits at the shark’s throat.
— the frilled lizard; from Wikipedia:
(#5) Chlamydosaurus kingii (from the Reptiles Magazine site)The frilled lizard (Chlamydosaurus kingii), also known as the frillneck lizard, frill-necked lizard or frilled dragon, is a species of lizard in the family Agamidae. It is native to northern Australia and southern New Guinea. This species is the only member of the genus Chlamydosaurus. Its common names come from the large frill around its neck, which usually stays folded against the lizard’s body. It reaches 90 cm (35 in) from head to tail and can weigh 600 g (1.3 lb). Males are larger and more robust than females. The lizard’s body is generally grey, brown, orangish-brown, or black in colour. The frills have red, orange, yellow, or white colours.
