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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2006-10-05 15:09:40

dp
Member
Registered: 2006-10-05
Posts: 1

In Pacific (or Pasific, to be more specific)

A common verbal mistake that I can’t find any reference to on this site is the morphing of “in specific” to “in pacific”, or from “specifically” to “pacifically” (or any other phonetically identical misspelling).

It would seem that this verbal mistake comes about initially through slight speech impediment, but is probably then shared amongst peer groups. However, I haven’t found too much evidence of this written form of the mistake, except for examples where the writer is intentionally playing on this well-known example:
E.g. http://www.projectopus.com/node/2341

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/ … m=storyrhs

However, this absence of a written use of “pacific” in the place of “specific” is probably due to the fact that the name “Pacific” is known well enough that this error is immediately spotted.

This is not the case when the writer spells the word differently, as in “pasifically”. A google search turns up many wonderful examples of this.
e.g. “the website it said it was pasifically made for gmax,”

“More pasifically, boot screen dosen’t show up” “Yeah i agree wif u except i dont pasifically wanna liv in New York mayb lyk California or Florida i dunno just America ! ! ! ”

From my understanding, this should be considered an eggcorn. What do y’all think?

David

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#2 2006-10-05 23:34:39

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: In Pacific (or Pasific, to be more specific)

This seems more likely to be a malapropism to me. It would be an eggcorn only if it were clear that the writers understood what “pacific” usually means and that they were rationalizing the word’s presence in this phrase. But I can’t find a way of plugging the usual meaning of “pacific” back into the phrase and getting something that still makes sense.

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#3 2006-10-06 08:12:04

mr_sloane
Member
Registered: 2006-10-06
Posts: 15

Re: In Pacific (or Pasific, to be more specific)

Yes, a malapropism rather than a eggcorn. My dad used to say it all the time, probably due to a minor speech impediment as suggested above. ‘Specific’ is a harder word to say than ‘pacific’, which has a fairly obscure meaning (apart from the ocean) so why not just say that instead?

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