Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I ran into this one in the wild today and wondered how common it was. Doesn’t seem to be all that common really, with 1110 hits for “conscrewed as” vs. 32.5 million for “construed as”, and some of the “conscrewed” sightings are intentional puns.
Here are some examples that I think really are uses of an eggcorn, however:
“Some of you are so shallow that if you find one misspelled word or something that can be mis-conscrewed as factually wrong, you think youve won the argument.. ”
http://patterico.com/2006/04/05/4416/er … er-asshat/
“Didn’t want our lack of geography knowledge to be conscrewed as racism. ”
http://rellavent.blogspot.com/2006/09/l … e-330.html
“If anybody who has purchased a questionable datalogging unit that doesn’t fit into the current rules or has capabilities beyond what is allowed can continue to use this unit in their race car but only if other racers who purchased fully legal units bring up anything that may be conscrewed as valid points about the possible abuse of or the legality of the said units.”
http://dragster.com.au/modules/newbb/vi … 075b39f58e
“You have conscrewed what she says into her trying to be mean.”
http://p086.ezboard.com/fgeoparentfrm28 … 21&stop=40
“some of the views are twisted and conscrewed, i’m trying not to judge but it’s hard on here when you forget it’s a joke,”
http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2002.3. … 0.333.html
“Anger over the entire misunderstanding and conscrewed opinions on Singapore and her judicial system.”
http://merlions.blogspot.com/2005/12/barbaric.html
I like these last three because I think the users of the word are interpreting it as being related to “screwed up” or “turned around” and are then using the word in places where I don’t think “construed” would fit.
The dictionary definition gives construe as “to understand or explain the sense or intention of usually in a particular way or with respect to a given set of circumstances”. The word in colloquial usage does often suggest an unlikely interpretation or a willful mis-interpretation. Substituting “conscrewed” seems to exaggerate this aspect of the usage of the word.
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A weird and wonderful find. I think you’re entirely right that this is a case where the shift in form has been accompanied by a shift in meaning, and the new word now fills a perceived semantic gap. In the last two examples in particular, “conscrewed” seems to refer to a perspective that’s “screwed-up or perverse due to a misconstrual of something.” It’s also interesting that the negativity implied in “screw” seems to substitute for that missing “mis-” in “misconstrue.” I doubt it’s gonna spread like wildflowers, but I like it—it’s both subtler and far more colloquial-sounding than the original word.
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