Date:  Wed, 20 Sep 1995 10:59:53 -0600

From:  Larry Davis <DAVIS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WSUHUB.UC.TWSU.EDU>

Subject: Re: Mouse/Mice=House/Hice



Sometimes a little linguistic history can help. House and mouse (both /hus/

and /mus/ in OE) had different histories. /mys/ (the OE plural) came about via

umlaut. A dative (I think) /musi/ in IE got umlauted to /mysi/ in Gmc. Then the

suffix -i (which conditioned the umlaut) was dropped in OE. /mis/ came about

between OE and ME, when the high front round vowel got unrounded.And, of

course, blouse has still another history--although blouse-blice sounds kind of

nice.



Possible?