tenure(d) » ten year
Spotted in the wild:
- He is a ten year professor and takes advantage of it. (RateMyProfessors.com, April 25, 2006)
- Though I am now a practicing attorney and a ten year professor of management, I still subscribe to and read Science News. (White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, meeting transcript, January 23, 2001)
- I’m also 46 tommorrow, so to pursue this would not be with the idea of a ten-year track position obviously. (Clayart forum, March 27, 2000)
Analyzed or reported by:
- Ken Lakritz (in the Eggcorn Forum)
Ten year suggests a long time — most likely the time a candidate has to invest to obtain such a position (esp. in ten-year track position).
Many thanks to Pat Schwieterman, who dug up Ken Lakritz’s original posting. The eggcorn was also suggested, without specific examples, by Jennifer Sexton in a different comment thread.
1
Commentary by Marnen Laibow-Koser , 2006/07/21 at 6:45 pm
“Though I am now a practicing attorney and a ten year professor of management…” — I’m not sure this person meant “tenured”, as in this context the meaning “I have been a professor for 10 years” makes at least as much sense. Is it possible to tell from the larger context?
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Commentary by Ed Korn , 2006/08/10 at 10:37 pm
At Hampshire College, tenure does not exist. Instead, faculty are eventually granted “ten year” contracts which function as Hampshire’s version of “tenure.” Many deliberately plays with that eggcorn.
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Commentary by Jason Gohlke , 2006/08/12 at 12:50 am
Also, consider that it appears in a meeting transcript. It seems much more likely a transcription error than an “eggcorn.” [Sorry — it’s too new for me to not put it in quotation marks.]
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Commentary by James Crippen , 2006/09/20 at 4:08 am
One example of conciously playing with this eggcorn is when referring to a “ten-yeared” grad student. The implication is that the grad student has been attending but ungraduated for such a long time that their institution has given up and granted them tenure. There are one or two in my department…