Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Apparently “deleterious” originates with the Greek deleterios (to hurt). I guess this is distinct from the etymology for “delete” which comes from the Latin delere (to wipe out, destroy). Is it possible that these two words are strictly unrelated? ...Because ever since I had noticed the similarity of the spelling of those two words, I tended to pronounce “deleterious” a bit more like “delete -erious” ...until now. (And, I suppose this might constitute an eggcorn if my premise is correct). Furthermore, I find it odd that the pronunciation of “deleterious” (roughly, “dell-aterious) has drifted more in the direction of “dill -aterious” than “delete -erious.” Has anyone else noticed this? I welcome your thoughts on this topic.
Offline
I was hoping to get some takers on this discussion, but perhaps I’m the only one who incorrectly interpreted “deleterious” in the sense of “delete -erious” ...as if it meant “having a (harmful) effect tending toward deletion” rather than simply “having an unexpected harmful effect.” Any thoughts?
.
.
.
As a tangent of this discussion, I googled “dilaterious” and got just 82 hits. Most of them were simply misspellings (toward the pronunciation “dill -aterious”). But I found one very curious usage where the sense “dilate -erious” is intended: a discussion of the adverse(?) dilational effect of a balloon being referred to as a “dilaterious effect”...
Package for toy elastomer balloons – Patent 4305501… readily indicating to a recipient of the package A of balloons B the optimum size to which the balloons B may be inflated without dilaterious effect. ...
www.freepatentsonline.com/4305501.html – 19k – Cached – Similar pages
Last edited by jorkel (2007-01-09 10:29:31)
Offline