That's not true. https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-photo-owl-sitting-crossed-legs-822881945319.
Cool image though and funny meme.
Ahhh yeah you can see it, there's a bit of fluff that looks like it's the right leg going over, but it's just fluff.
Owls are 90% fluff, so this checks out.
I mean hey its important to note that its not scientifically accurate. I think its a nice meme though as it really does look like criss cross applesauce.
I agree. I didn't respond with malice... the truth just stole our collective enjoyment of the idea that an owl could and would sit criss-cross applesauce. There's just something adorable about the notion. :)
I considered adding a /s but decided to roll with the down votes... lol
Am American, I know the phrase criss cross applesauce, but have never heard it used seriously. I've always said and heard, cross legged. Years ago it was called Indian style but I haven't heard that in years.
Yeah, was Indian style as a kid in the early '90s. Little kids need some mnemonic device to literally just not fly off the face of the earth, and so that was the replacement they came up with. Cross-legged just doesn't grab a kid's attention like mashed apples.
You're missing the rest of the rhyme.
OK kids, come over and sit criss cross applesauce, quiet as a mouse. Do as I say, or I'll come to your house. That's where I might just talk to your mother, and see if we should replace you with another.
Boring fact: it's also "sit like a Turk" or "sit the Turkish way" in Russian (сидеть по-турецки).
Now I'm curious what they say in Turkish.
UPD: me and @TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee are referring to the Lotus position which is what it is called in Turkish.
American accents seem to prefer the Shakespearean version: "Wicked", "Dogged" but not "Curved" for whatever reason. Maybe it has to do with the tendency for the word to be used as a verb. "Curved" is usually an adjective but sometimes a verb, while "Wicked" is nearly always an adjective.
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I think it's often to distinguish between two words that would otherwise be homophones.
There's "wick'ed" (two syllables) as in "something wicked this way comes" and "wicked" (one syllable) as in "Grady wicked away the spilled avocaat from Jack Torrence's jacket with a towel".
There's "dogg'ed" (two syllables) as in "dogged perseverance", but also "dogged" (one syllable) as in "Javert dogged Valjean for many years".
I don't have one for "curved" though. I think i've only ever heard it as one syllable, except for maybe in cases where poetic meter requires use of an "èd". Although, I think "curv'ed'ly" has three syllables, but I might be making that up. Typing up this comment has given me semantic satiation.
But, yeah, I think you're right about the adjective vs verb thing. The two-syllable examples are adjectives, while the one-syllable examples are verbs. Except for curved...
It does in an American accent, I guess
In my accent (UK), "cross" rhymes with "boss", and "sauce" rhymes with "horse". Pretty sure boss and horse don't rhyme.
If I'm understanding correctly then the words "sauce" and "source" are indistinguishable when spoken by a brit?
Its important because if youre at the dinner table and ask for sauce wrong, mum will pass you 273,000 lines of javascript.
Wait, so the non-rhotic accent adds an "r" into words that don't have one? I guess all your "r"s at the ends of words need to go somewhere...
Huh? Well, yes, but that's not what's happening, here. What you're referencing is "that sofa is red" becoming "that sofa rizz red". I'm not adding an "r" to "sauce" haha.
Because sauce and horse are long and cross and boss are short, right?
I'm not a native speaker but our lord and savior Dr Lindsey made a great video about British English and what Americans get wrong about it.
For me as a second language learner, cross rhymes with boss but sauce neither rhymes with horse nor boss. But that's just me tho.
Great video! His stuff is brilliant. I'm a native speaker but every now and then one of his videos will pop up in my feed and I'll end up learning about how I talk lol. Highly recommended for anyone interested in fascinating deep dives into speech.
Whenever there are these kinds of threads there's always loads of people posting things like "sauce rhymes with boss not horse" or something.
This rhyming and text based approach is confusing because in different accents words might be pronounced differently than how the writer is pronouncing them and they may all rhyme or none of them may rhyme.
If you're not familiar with phonetic spelling (most people I know aren't) then audio clips with the differences are probably the way to go. Just typing random words isn't a great way of comparing accents.
Per the (extremely fascinating) video, it seems that phonetic spelling from the dictionary doesn't always capture the correct pronunciation, or mechanically what is happening with the mouth... E.g. US "blue" with the 'w' at the end where we release the lips when done with the o. Hm.
I hadn't really thought much about how, mechanically, one has to reposition one's tongue, jaw, and lips to shift between the end and beginning of words and that can lead to a glide(?) or modulation if we speak without stopping airflow between words.
I suppose we should think of pronunciation in terms of motor planning for tongue, jaw, lips, etc. to be more accurately descriptive.
I need an example pronunciation of how it doesn't rhyme because the only way I can hear it in my head rhymes. I've never heard of this name for the seating method though.
Cross rhymes with boss, toss, moss, loss, Ross.
Sauce rhymes with horse, coarse, force.
So for them to rhyme you would either have to say "crawse" or "Soss"
Those are homophones. If I told you about the source of the Nile I could be talking about something Egyptians put on their chips.
All occurrences of "au"? Audience? Cautious? Daughter? Or is there some kind of restraint like only if the proceeding consonant is hard or soft?
Exactly the same way. Sauce and source are the same for us in England.
So to us, it's like OP is saying "criss cross apple source", which just sounds silly.
In the US, it really doesn't.
The proper American phonetic for sauce is "saas". The proper american phonetic for cross is "craas".
I think you MIGHT be able to defend it for British English, which use phonetics "kros" and "haws" and "saws" for above words. But I would say "aws" and "os" phonetics are close enough to to count as rhyming by most standards, and classical poetry uses far less clear rhymes commonly.
I (Brit) didn't even recognise it as intended as a rhyme until I read this comment section
That's really interesting. I ran it through a british tts and it sounded closer than a lot of classic poetry rhymes.. Yeah, it's not exactly the same, but it's similar.
Run that string through an American English TTS, and you'll see exactly how perfect it rhymes.
Have you ever been to Bristol? The way they pronounce "half" reminds me of American accents. Not "half" like the Queen's English, not "haff" like some places oop norff, but "haaaff" said with kind of a wide mouth. It perhaps makes sense, as Bristol was a port town that a lot of early immigrants to America started from.
That and Scottish kids. I think they watch so much YouTube these days (particularly up in the middle of nowhere) that they pick up a twang of American.
...I thought that was a cutesy joke. But that's not what I meant. They said sauce rhymes with horse. So either they say "source" for sauce or hoss for horse.
But that actually checks for a Boston accident now that I think of it.
It doesn't work in my accent either, but think about how some people write 'lawl' as a phonetic of 'lol'
I think that was the transitional terminology from when they used to tell kids to sit "indian style"
BEHOLD FOR I (a brit) HAVE RECORDED AUDIO!
this is why the phrase "criss cross applesauce" does not rhyme in British English. cross rhymes with boss, sauce rhymes with horse. Criss cross applesauce. (sorry for quality - I didn't realize my phone mic was such garbage)
in British
😒 Watch it Dutchie, or we'll start sending more drunk stag weekenders
(I put in an edit to make clear that I am, in fact, British)
Well, I still don't see how it does not rhyme.
Watch it Dutchie
😒 Even though I am a slim 2-meter tall blonde blue-eyed rude narcissistic guy with a strong Dutch accent living in Amsterdam, eating sandwiches for lunch, even though I can ride a bike and skipper a ship in any weather with equal ease, and I do enjoy making fun of Brits, I am not Dutch. I also drink more tea than you do :P
I literally has this exact conversation back when I saw this on Reddit.
"History always repeats itself" or something.
I think that's a hawk.
Owls have sausage eyes, they are fixed focal length and go back into their skulls, leaving very little room for a brain.
Edit: with a reverse image search, it seems I'm not the first to say this. My guess is that this is just dodgy taxidermy - maybe it was an owl, but taxidermy is notoriously bad at eyes.