Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995 23:35:17 EDT

From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU

Subject: Re: PEAS



Russell King writes,

I never did figure out what English peas

are. The only peas I know from are green, snow, or black-eyed.



My impression (I've read or heard this somewhere, and it bears out my own

experience) is that "English peas" is the Southern term for green peas or

what most Americans probably just call "peas." Because in the South (and

this was true in my childhood, in southern Oklahoma with Arkansas parentage),

"peas" standing alone is likely to be understood as black-eyed peas; the less

common green things must be distinguished as "green peas" or "English

peas."

and one or two others provided the same information. Now I know why the

non-metric system of measurement is called the English system, as we've been

reading. English obviously = 'unmarked, default, real'.