bludgeon » bloodgeon

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • On Sunday morning (2:30am), a mexican woman and her 19 year old daughter got bloodgeoned to death here in Fremont. (Livejournal post, 2 Feb, 2004)
  • Democracy is the bloodgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people. (reader comment, accessed Jan 4, 2009)
  • There are waaay too many games out there with ‘rap’ gangster types on it or games that encourage people to bloodgeon their friends to death with bats or whatever. (Forza2 motorsport forum, July 5, 2007)
  • My first day saw the brutal task of bloodgeoning a mouse to death to feed a jaguarundi, and my eyes were the first to behold the 5 hour old baby Spider Monkey. (Blog post, June 07, 2007)

Analyzed or reported by:

A bloodthirsty eggcorn. The origin of _bludgeon_ is not well understood. AHD4 laconically states “[Origin unknown.]”, and the OED offers several lines of inquiry — or speculation:

> [Not found before the 18th c.: origin unknown.
_Blogon_ (with g = j) is quoted by Dr. Whitley Stokes from the Cornish drama _Origo Mundi_ (? 14th c.), but its relation to the English is uncertain. Other Celtic etymologies sometimes proposed are on many grounds untenable. A Du. vb. _bludsen_ to bruise, has also been compared; and it has been suggested that the word is of cant origin, connected with _blood_.]

It is therefore possible — though not very likely — that users of the eggcorn are even going back to the word origin.

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2009/01/04 |

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