Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A while ago, I was told that “belief” comes from an Old English word meaning “by life”, i.e., we show our belief by our life. When I actually looked this up, I discovered it was not even remotely true, so I did a google search to try to find where this myth started. I only found one site, which claimed the OE word was “beliven” (OE doesn’t even have the letter ‘v’, as far as I know). Looking for further results, I googled “beliven”, only to discover that almost all of the hits were misspellings of “believen”, a reinterpretation of “believe in”. This even makes some sense, in analogy with words like “darken”, “flatten” etc., where the ”-en” suffix creates a transitive verb. I was even able to find a few examples of the verb being conjugated, so “if one believens God”, and “believening God just because…”.
This is my first submission to the Eggcorn database. Is this a legitimate eggcorn?
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Not long ago I would have said that the etymology of the two words “believe” and “believen” are too close to constitute an eggcorn, but I’ve since backed away from that stance. (Run a search on “ahold” if you want the details).
I think you’ve made a good case for “in” being transformed to ”-en.” And the example you cite really drives the point home. So, now I’d say yes it is an eggcorn.
It would be nice to see some more examples… Perhaps with a different base word. (E.g., “flat in” becomes “flatten,” or “dark in” becomes “darken.” ) The two I mention here probably aren’t viable, but there must be others.
Last edited by jorkel (2007-03-29 15:14:24)
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