Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I think that the phrase ‘trials and travels’ gets used because writers have heard the more common ‘trials and travails’ (30k vs. 8k ghits). But I’m not sure if this is an eggcorn because people who write about ‘trials and travels’ are usually referring to real physical travels; they aren’t using the words incorrectly.
On the other hand, if the travels are sufficiently arduous- as they usually are when paired with ‘trials’- they qualify as travails, which does make the new phrase kind of eggcornish. Examples:Sinusitis continued to get worse throughout several years of trials and travels until I’d visitied Louis J. Marx, MD in Ventura, California …
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_2002_Feb-March/ai_82881794
I might lay down my head in the will of God in my own habitation after all my trials and travels.
books.google.com/books?id=G8MRAAAAIAAJ…
He was the third son of a devout Jewish family but became a dissenting Christian minister after many trials and travels.
www.big-village.co.uk/hunts/brampton/history/index.htm
My first year in college I fell in love with the voice of my history professor after he delved into the trials and travels of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
journals.aol.com/bgilmore725/Wanderer/entries/2006/07/15/one-day-until…-and-storytelling/1210
The years and trials and travels and successes have not jaded her heart, inflated her ego or dampened her creative spirit.
goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5266672/Elizabeth-Catlett-legendary-artist-is.html
Last edited by klakritz (2007-10-11 21:27:26)
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I think it’s an eggcorn (except for it’s appearance in a few book titles …which is likely to be intentional). “Travails” is a sufficiently unfamiliar word relative to “travels.” Also, “trials” and “travels” both have an element of learning from life’s experiences, so they fit well together. Finally, if you’ll allow me to appeal to some of my past logic on subjects like this, I doubt anyone would have constructed the phrase “trials and travels” if the phrase “trials and travails” had not existed first. So, all my analysis points to the former being an eggcorn. Perhaps it’s emergence in book titles has now made it rather mainstream.
Book titles below are most likely intentional (and not eggcorns)...
Amazon.com: From Salesman to Chief Executive Officer: The Tr…
Amazon.com: From Salesman to Chief Executive Officer: The Trials and Travels of Anazje: Books: Anwer Jivajee by Anwer Jivajee.
www.amazon.com/Salesman-Chief-Executive-Officer-... – 108k – Similar pages
http://www.amazon.com/Salesman-Chief-Ex … 1587360446
The trials and travels of Janie Webster Leech – Arts&Stuff
The trials and travels of Janie Webster Leech, ... The trials and travels of Janie Webster Leech. Lindsey Garman/Copy editor …
www.easternprogress.com/news/2002/02/14/Artsstuf… – 40k – Similar pages
http://www.easternprogress.com/news/200 … 4462.shtml
Annie Rogers
THE TRIALS AND TRAVELS OF ANNIE ROGERS. By Wayne Kindred. Wearing expensive clothes and carrying more than $500 in cash, Annie Rogers walked into the Fourth …
home.att.net/~wk354/Rogers.html – 16k – Similar pages
http://home.att.net/~wk354/Rogers.html
Missouri History
Last edited by jorkel (2007-10-12 06:38:41)
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Since travel and travail are variants of the same word, wouldn’t we need to know the pedigree of the idiom before we could say that “trials and travels” is an eggcorn? If the idiom precipitated from the English solution before the words trial and travail made a definitive split, then those who spread the idiom may have intended something closer to “trials and travels,” and modern users of the phrase “trials and travels” may be echoing, even preserving, ancient usage.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Good point kem. I am a little suspicious of any substitutions that might share an etymology with the original word. Let’s see if anyone can shed more light on this.
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Interesting one. We would need to be looking a bit further at the idiom / set phrase “trials and travails”, as the “trials and travels” variant is by no means new:
The hopes Leopold Mozart had built on Wolfgang’s success in Paris were not to be realized. The enthusiasm he had aroused as a child prodigy was not awarded to the matured musician. Three months passed away in more or less fruitless endeavor. Then the mother, who had been his constant companion in these trials and travels, fell seriously ill. (Harriette Brower, The World’s Great Men of Music, 1922)
But Marcus was now getting old, and he was worn out with the toils, trials, and travels of his long and weary life. (Frederic William Farrar,
SEEKERS AFTER GOD, 1869)
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