Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
I’ve noticed what I believe is a perfect eggcorn: “porthole” misinterpreted as “portal”
Porthole, from dicitonary.com:
1. a round, windowlike opening with a hinged, watertight glass cover in the side of a vessel for admitting air and light.
2. an opening in a wall, door, etc., as one through which to shoot.
—http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/porthole
Portal, from dictionary.com:
a door, gate, or entrance, esp. one of imposing appearance, as to a palace.Some examples found in the wild:
“As I look out the small portal window I realize…”
—http://breedloveproject.blogspot.com/20 … dow-i.html
“a circular chrome metallic portal window” – image is clearly a porthole
—http://www.bigstockphoto.com/photo/view/2263375
“The little round window by the door seems oddly placed to me. It’s like a portal on a boat or something”
—http://www.vacant-nebula.com/blog/2007/ … ownership/ (in the comments)
image labeled as “portal window” which should be called porthole
—http://www.pbase.com/bmacdougall/image/ … 9/original
Last edited by iempleh (2007-12-17 14:01:45)
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About a month ago, one of the Database gatekeepers—Arnold Zwicky—pointed out the portal/porthole reshaping over on the Language Log blog, and he noted that it wasn’t yet recorded in the forum. I was astonished—I thought we already had it (I’ve seen it in student papers a number of times), but he seems to be right. In any case, he said in the LL post that he’d eventually get it into the Database. His post is here: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language … 05103.html
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Interesting, in that the language log post is about the opposite conversion (i.e. “porthole to hell”) from what I described (i.e. “portal window”).
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