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Monday, November 12, 2007

Granny farming, passablanc

Recent interesting catchwords from the Double-Tongued Dictionary are:

granny farming: n. a form of voting fraud in which pre-marked absentee ballots are taken to nursing homes to be used and mailed by residents.

passablanc adj. in New Orleans, being of mixed race but presenting oneself as a white person.

Filed under Catchword Summary • Language and Languages • (2) Comments • Permalink

I too saw “passablanc” in the Times story and couldn’t help wondering whether it was a misspelling based on the French pronunciation of the much-more-common “passe blanc.” Also--even more commonly--"passe pour blanc.”
Posted by Nancy Friedman on  11/12  at  10:21 PM
It’s not the original French, but a Creole spelling. You can find a few instances of the spelling in a couple of academic books.
Posted by Grant Barrett on  11/12  at  11:35 PM

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