Dachshund » Dashound

Classification: English – cross-language

Spotted in the wild:

  • A very good friend of mine has dashound. Her husband was a hunter (hogs, deer, whatever) and started taking the dashound along… (link)
  • Varmints were controlled by two semi-vicious dogs at different times. One was a dashound and the other a German shepherd. (link)

It’s easy to see the source of the reanalysis… everyone knows that ‘hound’ is nearly synonymous with ‘dog’… and the eggcorners can’t really be blamed since (I think) ‘hund’ means dog (in German?)

(I also discovered from some pet owners’ forum that other misspellings/shortenings are ‘dotsen’ and ‘doxen’. I can’t see the logic behind the first, since they’re not usually spotted, but perhaps the second has something to do with the sound of ‘dogs’? Or perhaps those two are just short-forms, rather than genuine mistakes. But ‘dashound’ certainly seems to be a widespread, eggcorny error. ‘Dashhound’ is less common, but it exists…)

_[2006-05-24, CW: Closed comments on this entry because of targetted spamming.]_

| link | entered by Sravana Reddy, 2005/03/20 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by Tom Phillips , 2005/03/20 at 4:57 am

    Absolutely. “Dashound” (or the alternate spelling, “dashhound”) is something I’ve heard even in a Cornish accent/dialect. That’s pretty far removed, geographically, from the presumably American origins of Dashound as a common name - but they’re very similar in speech patterns…

    (cf. “Geech, our old smellhound”)

    Makes a perfect sort of sense, even though Dachshunds are probably amongst the least naturally “dashy” dogs… they’re still bred for hunting, though, so there’s a certain amount of dashing involved… through badger setts, mostly. Personal folk etymology isn’t usually terribly rigorous, after all.

  2. 2

    Commentary by R.M. Whelton , 2005/03/20 at 3:59 pm

    I suspect “doxen” comes from people trying to say the breed’s name in its German pronunciation but either not quite getting it or being casual about it. The ch and s run together into k-s, the h vanishes, and the final d drops off. From there, the journey from “daksun” to “doxen” is quite a short one for many English speakers.

  3. 3

    Commentary by codeman38 , 2005/03/25 at 8:01 am

    Which reminds me– I’ve seen a couple classified ads in which the advertiser got Dachshunds and Datsuns confused!

  4. 4

    Commentary by Kacie , 2005/05/16 at 5:32 pm

    Actually, people in Texas (and maybe in the Midwest US in general?) pronounce ‘daschund’ as ‘doxen’. That’s just the way we say it, so it makes sense that when people are confused about the spelling they spell it phonetically.

  5. 5

    Commentary by mw , 2005/08/27 at 10:36 am

    Yes, “Hund” means “dog” in German. Literally, a Dachshund is a “badger dog”, as “Dachs” is the German word for “badger”

  6. 6

    Commentary by Julie , 2006/01/27 at 6:54 pm

    I grew up saying it “daksun” as the person above mentioned, spelling it Dachshund. I agree that “doxen” is probably a direct result of people trying to spell the German pronounciation. :) I have a friend who is from a slightly more rural area who says “dash-hound.” She spells it like that too - Dashhound.

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