The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #124714   Message #2755887
Posted By: Jim Dixon
30-Oct-09 - 02:18 PM
Thread Name: BS: This year's jack-o-lanterns
Subject: RE: BS: This year's jack-o-lanterns
Yes, those are clever. Matching those 2 pumpkins must not have been easy.

Your message made me think of one other interesting thing. It's been a long time since I've heard the term "jack-o-lantern". It must be disappearing from our vocabulary. Mostly people just call them "pumpkins"—either carved or uncarved.

Go to Google Images and search for pumpkin and you get 18,600,000 hits, and you also see that about half of the images depict carved pumpkins, i.e. jack-o-lanterns.

Search for jack o lantern and you get 1,940,000 hits.

(You also see some interesting pictures.)

In other words, we use the word "pumpkin" about 5-10 times as often as we use the term "jack-o-lantern" even when we're talking about jack-o-lanterns.

More interesting than talking about the BNP, in my opinion.