hoarfrost » whorefrost

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Me recently at Antelope Island - Great Salt Lake surrounded by whorefrost. …” (link)
  • “… yet it was not to be …for the wicked cold hardness of the waters of the world froze solid …and the air (error) of it ….turned into whorefrost ….” (link)

Jess Anderson suggested on the Usenet newsgroup soc.motss (20 August 2005) that “whorefrost” might occur as an eggcorn. After all, the “hoar” of “hoarfrost” is opaque. I found a few examples that appear to be genuine (some are plays on words), but these could be simple spelling errors. On the other hand, the ‘bad woman’ connotation of “whore” might be vivid to some people, who take hoarfrost to be a nasty force of nature.

| link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/08/21 |

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