pore » pour

Chiefly in:   pour over (a text)

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • You may have the picture of the cigar-smoking general, with feet on desk, pouring over the newest periodicals for news, or grabbing a sheet from the teletype, but it’s the ordinary soldier, the man who fights in the mud and dirt, who wants to know everything that is going on at home. (link)
  • Yet as Christians is it not valuable to consider how the Holy Spirit has spoken to our brothers and sisters over the millennia as they have struggled with various issues, poured over the Scriptures and often fasted and prayed heartily with their fellow Christians in the light of the inspired texts? (link)
  • This will supply a detailed image of the currents entering the region from this direction, helping Tom Haine to increase the accuracy of his mathematical model of the Irminger Sea. We can see him below at his desk pouring over the next modification to be made. (link)
  • What was unusual was the fact that Mary Patten proceeded to acquaint herself with every foot of NEPTUNE’S CAR from bow to stern. In those long days a sea, the young wife watched and learned as her skipper poured over her charts and navigated his vessel. Soon the Captain’s wife was adept at navigation. […] And, all during this, she worried about her husband and paid little attention to her well-being. She poured over few medical texts aboard ship, shaved his head, gave him medication at hand, sat by his side, tried to rally him, but her husband’s health continued to decline. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

(Originally entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/10.)

For some people this might just be a misspelling. But others are quite sure that the verb really is “pour”; they relate it to the “pour” of “pour yourself into your work” and explain that “pour over” is just ‘lavish attention on’. For them, this is the replacement of the infrequent, specialized, and opaque verb “pore” by the everyday, transparent verb “pour”.

| link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/02/10 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by David Loeb , 2006/10/31 at 4:18 pm

    Another one seen in the wild : ‘’Tonight: the cost of tackling climate change. We pour [sic] over the details of Sir Nicholas Stern’s report before speaking to its author and the environment secretary David Miliband. ‘’ [entry for Monday 30th October 2006 at www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsn…]

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