weigh » way
Spotted in the wild:
- Starting in April, the 120-passenger Clipper Odyssey will way anchor and leave Singapore for an intriguing 16-day journey to the islands of the Philippines. (Cost: $7,990.) (TIME Asia)
- CAP — Oh, yes, that’s right. I’m the captain. Let’s see… (shouts) way anchor! (link)
- Anchors Away! Atlantis and Herb depart. (link)
- Waying in on the race for U.S. Senator, Yamhill County Republicans gave 1,911 of their votes to Al King, who won the nomination. (Newberg Graphic, OR, May 19, 2004)
- Now pundits are always waying in on why we are engaging in certain things. (Mercury News (San Jose, CA), Aug. 22, 2004)
- Waying in on buying new or old homes. (Medill News Service, Feb. 15, 2005)
Analyzed or reported by:
- Arnold Zwicky at Language Log (Still on the eggcorn beet)
This is, once more, a very common pun: _anchors away_ can be found in the title of TV series, the names of travel agencies, boat equimment stores and cocktails, news stories about TV “anchors” who have to leave a particular job or assignment, and in HTML tutorials about how to mark up links. It is often unclear whether the particular writer was aware of the standard form (_aweigh_).
[Edited by Ben Zimmer on 7/21/05 to add examples of _way in (on)_, a substitution for _weigh in (on)_ ‘to join in a fight, argument, or discussion.’ This eggcorn perhaps reinterprets the expression to imply that one finds “a way in on” the matter at hand.]
1
Commentary by Doug Harris , 2006/05/16 at 4:04 am
Anchors away? And so many often are — away from
where they’re supposed to be — after off-shore
storms.
The extreme of that is witnessed after the likes of
Hurricane Katrina, to site but one example, where both
anchors and anchorages were, indeed, awry.
2
Commentary by Doug Harris , 2006/05/16 at 4:05 am
And I did, of course, mean cite… !!