Yelows* (for Yellows*)

Hello! I once knew a beautiful baby who pronounced the word yellow as "lello." Which actually seems rather appropriate, somehow, like a contraction of "lemon yellow." Or let's say if Yellow were a person, he'd be a soft-spoken, mellow sort of fellow, disinclined to shout or yell. Last night on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda repays a loan by buying Mary the cute convertible she'd had her eye on. Only, in order to get the great deal she got, she had to get the car in yellow. And, as it turns out, Mary hates yellow. Georgette, in typical fashion, tries to reassure her: "Yellow's a lovely color, Mary. It's the color of the sun, and wheatfields..." "Ticonderoga pencils..." adds Rhoda. "And daffodils," continues Georgette, "and lemons... Oops, I shouldn't have said that!" Yellow is my favorite color too. It's both happy (flowers, sunshine, smiley faces) and nostalgic (yellowing paper, antiques, sepia tints). There are many shades of yellow, but not too many ways to misspell it, it seems. There was only one instance of Yellos* in OhioLINK (and several in WorldCat, most qualified with a "sic") and four of Yelows* (zero in WorldCat). (We also got 40 hits on Yello, but at least 25 of those were false hits, mostly for the musical group Yello.)

(Baby playing with yellow paint, work by Dutch artist Peter Klashorst, entitled Experimental, 28 February 2007, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid