diuretic » diarrhetic
Spotted in the wild:
- You want to be cautious about how many drinks you have containing caffeine while on the drive. It is a diarrhetic (it makes you have to pee). (RV-Coach Online)
- Caffeine is a diarrhetic (so is alcohol) — it makes you pee and dehydrates you. (Monkeyfilter comment, Apr. 18, 2005)
- However, coffee is a powerful diarrhetic, which ultimately means it removes more water from your body than it provides. (Slashdot comment, Aug. 29, 2005)
- Energy drinks have caffeine, which is a diarrhetic, so you would never use it as a replacement fluid. (Youth Today, Oct. 2005)
- But there are so many counterpoints to the possible insulin offset thing that I don’t know whether it still makes sense; one being that caffeine is a diarrhetic, so it would seem that it would make you lose weight in some ways. (Biggest Loser - Ventura blog comment, Feb. 3, 2006)
- I bet you didn’t know that “pure water” is a diarrhetic. (Digg comment, Apr. 6, 2006)
Analyzed or reported by:
- melmike (Eggcorn Forum)
In the Eggcorn Forum, melmike writes:
“Diarrhetic” is a word: an adjective form of “diarrhea”. But even Google’s Adsense equates it with “diuretic”. We did find some other examples of this eggcorn in Google, but difficult to quantify without a lot of research (as many of the hits were re correct use of the word). However, we suspect that many folks who use “diarrhetic” for “diuretic” are not familiiar with the meaning of the existing “diarrhetic” and assume that, because a diuretic removes water from the body, sort of like diarrhea does, that the words are related.
1
Commentary by Brian hatch , 2006/08/14 at 2:13 am
I was told by a pharmacist that pure water may cause diarrhea so that comment may be true. I am not sure if pure water is a diuretic