thrall » trawl

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Don’t let formalities obscure your creative vision; while in the trawls of the creative process, energy is more important than perfection (accessed 15/11/2008)
  • kids are always entrawled by pirate stories (accessed 16/11/2008)
  • Thickly layered plot, effective pen work and a complex and entrawling journey into the world of Temperance Brennan. (accessed 16/11/2008)

A Google search for instances of “in the trawl(s) of” (and obvious variants) taking the place of “in the thrall(s) of” (etc.) turned up only the cited instance, among hundreds of instances (most, but not all, using “trawl” in the singular) related to fishing either literally or metaphorically. However, both “entrawled” and “entrawling”, taking the place of “enthral(l)ed” and “enthral(l)ing”, appear to be very common.

The semantic explication of this egg-corn that pops into my head is that that which is “in the trawl(s)” of a fishing boat has, literally, been “caught up”. The third occurrence cited is one of several dozen from the .ie domain; presumably those are non-semantically reinforced by, if not entirely due to, /θ/ -> /t/ substitution.

| Comments Off link | entered by Lee Rudolph, 2008/11/16 |

sopping, soaking » soaping

Chiefly in:   soaping wet

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • The spin cycle would not start and our laundry was soaping wet. (beth.typepad.com/n95/page/2/)
  • Jacqueline Bisset, one of Cinema’s natural splendors whether she’s wearing a white evening dress composed by a poet or a soaping-wet T-shirt, plays the Joe […] (New York Times Film Reviews (1977-1978), New York Times / Arno Press., 1979, p. 69)

Is “soaking wet” already an eggcorn for “sopping wet”?

| Comments Off link | entered by Lee Rudolph, 2008/09/28 |

tartar » tarter

Chiefly in:   tarter sauce

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Tarter Sauce Recipe - Everybody’s favorite accompaniment for fish—extremely simple to prepare.” (link)
  • “I know it may seem like the most disgusting thing you’ve ever heard of, but what’s even better served with tarter sauce (than seafood) is, of all things, French fries!” (link)

Pointed out to me by Ann Burlingham on 26 September 2008; she was astonished by the number of occurrences of “tarter sauce” she’d googled up (after noticing an instance). I got 76,800 raw webhits (vs. 444,000 for “tartar sauce”).

Many of these are undoubtedly just phonetic spelling, using the much more frequent spelling -er. But I suspect that some of them are facilitated by the idea that the word contains the adjective “tart”.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2008/09/27 |

gobbledygook » garbledygook

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Our advice is never wrapped up in technobabble or garbledygook; we give concise advice that’s direct and to the point. (Jackson Begg company description, retrieved 2008-08-31)
  • if you leave behind all your ex-sunday-school garbledygook and really read the new testament with a mind open to understanding what christ was getting at, it becomes apparent that fighting poverty, throwing off oppressive government, and uniting as a community to tackle difficult social problems are the main themes. (tribe.net forum, June 7, 2005)
  • Now here in GA I use Harcourt Math. In some ways I like it better than Trailblazers because it has a lot of practice exercises and less garbledygook. I know that the garbledygook (word problems, experiments, stories) is important for building problem-solving skills, but I have a lot of ESL students here too, and they struggle SO much with that. (Livejournal iteach3rdgrade community discussion, Jan 27, 2008)
  • It looks like a bunch of garbledygook but can be useful for support purposes. (thevBgeek wiki, retrieved 2008-08-31)
  • I am tempted to respond to your random garbledygook with the garbledygook that I’ve been reading, but I will not. (blog comment, May 01, 2007)

Analyzed or reported by:

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2008/08/31 |

curb » curve

Chiefly in:   curve one's hunger, appetite, enthusiasm, etc.

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “This will help you curve your appetite and cause you to eat less. Eat complex carbohydrates.” (link)
  • “Curve your enthusiasm! As yesterday, today you can find pessimistic headlines talking once again about housing problems…” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Paul Brians, Common Errors (link)
  • jorkel and others, Eggcorn Forum (link)
  • brians and others, Eggcorn Forum (link)

Brians: “A “curb” was originally a device used to control an unruly horse. Already in the 18th century people were speaking by analogy of controlling their appetites as “curbing” them. You do not “curve” your hunger, appetite, desires, etc. You curb them.”

Curb ‘control’ survives only in this metaphorical use, so it’s ripe for eggcorning.

(Suggested to me by Lee Rudolph.)

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2008/08/29 |
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