The snoot family autobiography told live — parents' acronym gag, genetically inherited snootitude — the real-life…
echoes
From: The Usage Wars — Bryan A. Garner + DFW, The Connection (WBUR, host Judy Swallow, March 30, 2001)
- Early text:
[scene] Wallace, asked to define the snoot, testifies
that most snoots inherit their snootitude genetically and that SNOOT is
his family's joke — his parents' gag, with paired acronym expansions for
the sympathetic and the mocking reading [01:53–02:31]; Garner later
quotes the genetic claim back approvingly and matches it with his own
three-generation correction-at-the-dinner-table upbringing [21:40–22:14]
- IJ echo: Avril Incandenza, prescriptivist and co-founder of the
Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts (endnote 51 gives the founding;
the M.G.M. supermarket-sign patrols and Avril's prescriptive-linguistics
books appear in Orin's account); the Incandenza household as a family
organized around language correction, with Hal the lexical prodigy
reciting OED entries
- Weight: shared-preoccupation