Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I’m seeing increasingly in Canadian newspapers the usage “get a hold of” rather than “get ahold of.” I think in general awareness of the a- prefix is waning.
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I agree with your sentiment. However, there is an ongoing debate whether this class of language reshapings constitute eggcorns. The etymology of “ahold” and “hold” is the same, so there is not the large departure of meaning that most eggcorns possess. (And, I suppose it’s worth one’s while to scour the entire list of words with the a- prefix to see if there are any exceptions to this pattern).
I also wanted to take some space here to expound on a semi-related point about prefixes… If we think about sets of prefixes like (super-, supra-), (inter-, inner-, intra-), (in-, contra-, dis-, anti-, non-, ex-), etc. it’s clear that some of these are close to others in their meaning and that a writer might select a nonstandard one either without knowing any better or perhaps out of laziness. In general, I wouldn’t consider a word with an inappropriate prefix an eggcorn. Perhaps this observation has some bearing on why other reshapings would not be considered eggcorns either. Just some food for thought.
Last edited by jorkel (2007-02-20 14:29:22)
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In fact, with a bit more research (and an email exchange with Arnold Zwicky), I’m backing off on this one. I do think that awareness of the a- prefix is waning, but it turns out that this isn’t a suitable case to illustrate it; the phrase “get a firm hold of it” illustrates why.
I think in some cases reinterpretation of a- as the indefinite article would constitute a reanalysis sufficient to call it an eggcorn. For instance, “he is going a way” in place of “he is going away” would be a reanalysis sufficient to reconstrue meaning (i.e., the idea would become that he is going one way or another way rather than he is simply going away)—and, in fact, I get a half dozen google hits for “he is going a way,” not all of which mean “he is going away,” but several do; the only question is whether they’re typos, which they could be. (One of the hits has “he is going a way too far,” which is another interesting development.)
I have a vague recollection of seeing another good example in this class, but I can’t remember what it was. If I recall, I’ll post it.
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I think your point about “a” being reinterpreted as an indefinite article is the one aspect I might have overlooked, so I stand corrected; perhaps there is eggcorn potential here.
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