mind you » mind due

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Mind due, he’s also happy cooking in his kitchen while his wife is out as the principle income earner in her household. (Christians On The Internet mailing list, Jan. 11, 2001)
  • I remember being stuck at primary school because of a hurricane. Mind due, that was 14 years ago, and I don’t think we’ve had another one since! (Jackson United forum, Sep. 17, 2003)
  • Mind due I doubt my opinion counts, I’ve only been a student for what, nearly 17 years, and a qualified instructor for almost seven of them. (Martial Arts Planet forum, July 22, 2004)
  • Mind due it would have to be really loud to out volume a RX100 going full tat up a dirt road. (Kiwi Biker forum, Jan. 2, 2005)
  • Mind due i’ve had to grab a couple of breezy files to fix some performance issues myself, but for a young distro its showing a hell of a lot of potential. (New Zealand Linux User Group, July 2, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

This eggcorn only seems possible in those dialects of English (UK, Aus., NZ, etc.) where due is pronounced /dju:/ (rather than the typical US pronunciation /du:/, homonymous with _do_). This allows /maɪndju:/ to be understood as _mind due_, since geminate /dd/ is pronounced simply as /d/.

Cf. the line in Meredith Willson’s song from _The Music Man_, “Till There Was You”: “…in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and dew.” As performed by the Beatles, it sounds as if Paul McCartney has reinterpreted the line as “dawn and you” (at least it sounds that way to some listeners — see this 2002 thread in alt.usage.english).

Cf. also point of view » point of you, which relies on a similar geminate simplification.

| link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/07/15 |

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