dudgeon » dungeon

Chiefly in:   in high dungeon

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • CBN’s David Brody is in high dungeon over a brief statement Mitt Romney’s campaign provided to him after he requested some insight into Romney’s views on evolution. (The Hotline, National Journal's daily briefings on politics, May 07, 2007)
  • Is this why Professor Elgin got into such high dungeon over the list? Clearly she wants to attack exaggerated squeamishness over English usage, but need she, in doing so, insist that “I Love to Refer Back to the First Time We Met” and “I Called You No Less Than Three Times a Day” are not usage errors? (Paul Kaser, Comment on Suzette Haden Elgin's "The Top Forty Mistakes", College English, Vol. 45, No. 8 (Dec., 1983), p. 824)
  • The left and their complicit partisan-liberal media literally have gone into high dungeon mode over the so-called “prisoner abuse scandal.” (polipundit.com blog, June 18, 2004)

Analyzed or reported by:

_High dungeon_ is one of the dozens of yet-to-be-edited contributions to the eggcorn hunt made by Ken Lakritz on this site. Ken, even if we are slow and it doesn’t always look like it, we will eventually get there.

Paul Kaser’s use of the eggcorn in his letter to _College English_ neatly illustrates the Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation: the question at the center of the controversy is precisely that of pointing out and correcting other people’s usage of English.

The eggcorn is not rare (ca 1800 GHits vs. 85,000 for the original phrase), presumably because _dudgeon_ is completely opaque, and the origin of the word unknown, according to AHD4.

| link | entered by Chris, 2007/06/06 |

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.