Eggcorn Forum

What an odd tangle this one is. I went looking for “far fledged,” thinking that it would turn out to be a malaprop for “far-fetched.” I found plenty of hits for my quarry, but it wasn’t – for the most part – used the way I had expected. In the examples immediately below, “far fledged” seems to mean “far-flung, distant.” (But I give a couple of other meanings below the first batch of examples.) Bizarrely, this may be a mix of three phrases: “far-flung” (the intended target phrase, which also provides the first element of the compound), “full-fledged” (which provides the second element in the compound but is otherwise irrelevant semantically), and perhaps “far-fetched” (which may provide a subliminal template for the reshaping as a whole). Just to make it a little more interesting, most of the writers seem to be based in South Asia – especially in India, Pakistan and Nepal. We’ve occasionally seen situations before in which an eggcorn or malaprop seems localized to a particular region – often Singapore or South or Southeast Asia – and this appears to fit that pattern. So why did “far fledged” become a meme among users of English in that area? I don’t know. Examples:

Air Deccan’s vision is to provide affordable and safe travel across the length and breadth of the country, including far fledged places like Andaman Islands.
http://www.and.nic.in/airdeccan.htm

Whereas Guru Nanak had travelled to far fledged places from Punjab, like Mecca (Saudi Arabia), Baghdad, Decca(Bangladesh) and Bidar (South India), Guru Arjan dev travelled mostly in Punjab, preaching and organizing the system of preachers (called masands established by NANAK III Amardas).
http://cfblog.com/Amritsar/

These ATMs are deployed at twelve far-fledged areas of Karachi (Business centre of Pakistan).
http://www.advogato.org/person/AntiMatter/

India has been represented by the Sikh community venturing out for business to far fledged lands, more than anyone else from India.
http://www.t2india.com/north-india-festivals.php

“If the Maoists can stop me from going into the far-fledged districts of the country, just think what the common man might have been experiencing”, Deuba added.
http://www.telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=1340

“Far-flung” isn’t the only thing that “far-fledged” can mean. In the following example, “distant” is a possible meaning, but I think the writer really meant something like “far-reaching”:

By shaking hands or touching or kissing a cheek we feel the impact only on the physical plane whereas, a Namaste has a far fledged effect …
http://www.godrealized.com/namashkar_na … madhi.html

And finally, there are indeed a few examples of “far fledged” meaning “far fetched.” In the following instance, the writer seems to be Eastern European rather than South Asian:

This seems quite plausible to me, as the reputed cognate in other IE sub-families look rather far fledged. This wouldn’t make it Protobulgarian, though.
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthre … 638&page=2

Finally, I should add that almost two years ago, Ryan Freebern noted instances of “full fletched” for “full fledged” in the old Commentary section:

# 577 Commentary by Ryan Freebern , 2005/08/20 at 1:22 pm
“full fletched” for “full fledged”
1070 ghits.
As a full fletched UN Program, the G77 wishes to see UN-HABITAT extending its operations
He displays the payment communication to the cardholder from his own site and only transmits full fletched data to our site.
Makes sense: a fully fletched arrow has all of its feathers and is this ready for use.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2007-07-18 16:58:33)