intolerant » and tolerant

Chiefly in:   lactose and tolerant , lack toast and tolerant

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Oh. i love Cold Stone Creamery! Sad thing is I can’t really have much of the ice cream there anymore since I am lactose and tolerant. (CMC Central forum, Aug 19, 2005)
  • Milk and string cheese, that’s all im going to eat from now on. Till I get lack toast and tolerant. (Dream Views forum, Aug 13, 2005)
  • ya thats disgusting man i cant believe you your lack toast and tolerant thats an early sign of homosexuality which im notsok with. (Teen Sexuality forum, Sep. 11, 2003)
  • I am trying several different medicines to try to control that and they think that I might be lactose and tolerant, after 13 years of worshiping milk. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Michael Quinion (for the double eggcorn "lack toast and tolerant") (World Wide Words newsletter, August 20, 2005, citing Michael McKernan)

As far as I have been able to determine, _and tolerant_ instead of _intolerant_ only occurs in cases where the writer is aiming for _lactose intolerant_ (in whichever spelling).

Strangely, even for the second most common medical term of the form “X intolerant”, _gluten intolerant_, the substitution doesn’t happen. An extrapolation of search engine hit counts for _lactose intolerant_, _lactose and tolerant_ and _gluten intolerant_ led me to expect about a dozen occurrences of _gluten and tolerant_. Considering that _in tolerant_ changes the meaning of _intolerant_ to its opposite, I wonder if the reshaping becomes more likely with increasing obscurity of the modifying noun, and if some writers believe that _lactose_ is an adjective, maybe related to _comatose_.

For further discussion of on the double eggcorn _lack toast and tolerant_ see the entry _lactose » lack toast_.

[An email discussion with Arnold Zwicky helped clear up this reshaping.]

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/09/15 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by Michael McKernan , 2006/01/20 at 7:32 pm

    While Michael Quinion was courteously correct in citing my name in connection with recognizing Lack Toast And Tolerant as an eggcorn (and posting to ADS-L), the credit for bringing this phrase to my attention belongs to Morgiana P. Halley, Ph.D., who noticed it in a paper by one of her students, and thought it striking enough to pass on to me.

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