libel » liable

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Comprehensive General Liability Insurance provides protection and defense for “non-professional” incidents that occur. This includes bodily injury or property damage to others for which you are legally liable, such as slip and falls on your premises, liable, slander, false arrest, and advertising liability. (Michigan Specialty Insurance Agency Inc)
  • Dakota, Do you believe in absolute free speech such as liable/slander, child porn, etc… (which is fine if you do)? If not, then you can agree that a line has to be drawn somewhere. (TalkLeft (commentator))
  • 11. Liable, Slander or Harassment. No user shall use Se-C or any items under its control, to slander, liable or harass any other person, business or company. Also included under this gambit is any threats to perform these acts. (Secure-Commerce)

This eggcorn has the particularity of crossing syntactic categories. Mostly in an enumeration followed by “slander”, or the combination “liable/slander”, the difference between these two legal terms being obscure for many non-specialists.

Libel has evolved from Lat. libellum (little book), while liable goes back to the Lat. verb ligare (bind).

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/01/12 |

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