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Chris -- 2018-04-11
My first post here, but I didn’t see this in the eggcorn database so I thought I would contribute what appears to be a quite prevalent eggcorn; apologies if it’s already been spotted somewhere else…
“How does getting 27 cents on the dollar become a sign of hope? Here’s how it works: you describe it as a “floor” and claim it shows that buyers are returning to the market. Yesterday’s Heard On The Street column in the Wall Street Journal took exactly this tact.” (Spotted in the wild at http://www.dealbreaker.com/2007/12/the_ … inning.php)
Clearly the intended meaning is “took exactly this tack” as in the sense of OED tack (n), 7a. “A course or line of conduct or action, implying change or difference from some preceding or other course” (figuratively derived from the nautical practice of tacking before the wind). And yet we are talking about a rhetorical strategy, so it’s easy to see how a speaker would think this has to do with the rhetorical virtue of tact. (In the quoted example above, this is certainly a tactful way of treating large losses incurred by selling assets at a 73% discount.)
In fact this usage is extremely prevalent, apparently outweighing the standard idiom by a fair margin. Google hits as of 12/4/07:
“take the tact of”: 6600*
“take the tack of”: 2860
“took the tact of”: 4250
“took the tack of”: 1860
*of which the top 10 appear to be entirely this sense (note that at least four of the top five have some context of persuasion/argument):
> Rather than take the story of ‘Melanethon’ as the metaphor it so clearly is, you decided to take the tact of arguing literally from Melanethons’ point of …
> Some people take the tact of minimal water changes, believing that aged reef tank water takes on a chemistry that should not be disturbed.
> Knowing that we have little incentive to buy things that we dont think we need, marketers take the tact of creating or awakening needs within us that help …
> The CDI should not take the tact of “Oh, that interpreter doesn’t understand you. Let’s talk and then I’ll tell them what you said. ...
> The answer may also take the tact of trying to overwhelm you with technical details. Now you’ve received your response.
I suppose nautical metaphors are quite foreign to the modern ear and thus particularly vulnerable eggcorn candidates.
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Welcome to the forum, matwood! Tack>>tact has an entry in the Database here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/76/tact/
Your comments are a useful addition, however—the Database entry remarks on the decline of nautical imagery but doesn’t talk about the idea of tact or tactics that’s replacing the sailing metaphor.
Your numbers surprised me quite a bit—I had no idea the reshaping was so common. The numbers changed a bit once I started looking for unique hits (with all the duplicates caused by linking between websites filtered out) rather than raw hits. Here’s what I got:
take the tack of—247 unique hits
take the tact of—85 unique hits
took the tack of—167 unique hits
took the tact of—45 unique hits
The “tact” versions continue to have a respectable market share—roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of the numbers for the std. phrase—but the standard was clearly ahead.
And things were really different with the phrase “take a different tack.” There, the standard got a whopping 54,000 raw hits, while the “tact” version had only 850. (These numbers were too big for unique hit readings.) I’m not sure why the gap was so huge with this phrase—perhaps “a different tack” is such a familiar “fixed phrase” that it’s less vulnerable to being eggcorned.
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Thanks for the reply! I see now that it was indeed already in the database (I had not realized the database search function returned multiple pages, which is a very useful thing to know). Glad you found the comments useful, I will definitely keep my eyes open for more eggcorns…
Btw, I had not thought of the “tactic” angle, but it makes a lot of sense as well. (Also, the Brians link/comment by JonF in the database both mention tactfulness, so I can’t really take credit for this.)
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The dropped final ‘t’ here looks like part of a larger pattern. tact > tack is quite similar to the frequently noted tract > track (as in ‘digestive track.’)
Last edited by klakritz (2007-12-09 15:00:01)
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Ken, you could probably post pact/pack as a separate find if you wanted to (assuming it hasn’t already been posted).
“Pack” has many definitions, and the ones that might be most applicable are “contents of a bundle” and “a large amount or number.”
A “disarmament pack” can certainly be construed to make sense. For me it conjures the image of negotiators putting together a whole pack (package?) of items to agree upon.
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