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Comment by mitchdoogle | Hacker News Reader

Strange because as an American I've almost always heard to them referred as Legos. As a kid, my friends and I said, "let's play with Legos". My parents would say " get these legos off the floor". Seems odd to me to think of these phrases without the "s" on lego

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I have a pet theory - in north america you have a popular snack called an eggo (pluralised to eggos) thats basically a waffle.

I think americans started calling lego legos because they were already calling eggos eggos. In the uk and europe generally we don't have eggos, so we don't have legos.

the catchphrase from the advertisement is "leggo my eggo", where leggo means "let go" which can't have an s appended. i have never had them so i am not sure, but i don't think they are that popular, and i haven't seem them referred to in plural

As a kid, I heard people say the phrase “legos my eggos”, (since the “leggo” had lost al of its association with “let go”).

Please, the Eggo corporation would prefer you refer to them as one EGGO or multiple EGGO waffles (tm)

Interestingly the company initially wanted people to call them "Froffles", but people apparently called them "eggos" due to the fact that they taste eggy. Then the company changed the name to "eggo" to reflect that.

I checked the wiki page and thought the contrast between the two approaches is interesting.

More likely, the Americans lengthen the e in the first syllable into almost a diphthong, like /eɪ/, and shorten the "o" in the second syllable into a schwa kind of sound that can comfortably be followed by /z/. Meanwhile, in British and many European accents, the first syllable is short and strongly stressed /ɛ/, and the o is /oʊ/, and you can't add an s without contorting your mouth in some horrible way. Which is why British people are so disgusted by "Legos". Try saying it with an American accent.

Yeah thats probably a more reasonable explanation than my theory. On the other hand its pretty common to say silos, speedos (both for swimwear and slang for a speedometer) and flamingos in British english and they have very similar endings.

As an American who grew up playing with and saying "legos," I've never heard anyone pronounce it the way you're suggesting.

I love pet theories so I hate to disagree. I've personally said the word "Legos" about 1M times in my life and it's mostly because Legos always come in groups, groups with a lot of items. You have to have a plural word to refer to them.

Also (child of the 70s) I am certain that I was calling mine Legos before I even knew about Eggo waffles. Third - boy I'm really piling on, sorry - I don't think I've ever referred to multiple Eggo waffles as "Eggos", probably because there's already "waffles" for that.

Yes, it's always "legos" when referring to the pieces (unless singular one piece), in my world.

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