weigh » way

Chiefly in:   way anchor , anchors away , way in (on)

Classification: English

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:

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.]

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/10 |

Commentaries

  1. 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. 2

    Commentary by Doug Harris , 2006/05/16 at 4:05 am

    And I did, of course, mean cite… !!

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