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#1 2008-03-18 08:14:28

Breffni
Member
Registered: 2007-11-27
Posts: 11

not in apposition to (i.e., not in a position to...)

I came across this in a student essay, and Google gives a few relevant hits on the first page:

“Another challenge is that women are often not in apposition to negotiate safer sex”
“The AUC is not in apposition to suggest what evidence should be provided”
“Therefore this community was not in apposition to walk with the other ethnic groups residing there”

I can’t think of a plausible rationale for this, so I don’t think it counts as an eggcorn. But I find it interesting that an idiom based on a common word has been reanalysed using a rare technical term.

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#2 2008-03-18 17:33:18

nilep
Eggcornista
Registered: 2007-03-21
Posts: 291

Re: not in apposition to (i.e., not in a position to...)

I wonder if this could be a spell checker artifact – the introduction of incorrect wording by spell-checking software.

I typed the following incorrect sentences in Microsoft Office Word 2003:

Mutt is in aposition to criticize Jeff.
Dooley is applying for aposition with the company.
Zelda is in aposition of power.

In the first and second cases, Word suggests “apposition” or “appositions” in place of “aposition”. In the third case it suggests “apposition”, “apportion” or “appositions”. It doesn’t suggest “a position” for any of these.

On the other hand, the following instances of “allot of” (which gets about 1.7 million Google hits) seem to intend “a lot of”.

Why do allot of people despise Green Day?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index … 252AAyPCYe

Allot of my hobbies revolve around computers: I am very much an open source person, and I strongly believe and sharing of knowledge and “intellectual” property.
http://prematureoptimization.org/blog/about-me

If you have allot of experience great if not don’t worry.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=177117

When I type, “Why do alot of people despise Green Day?” into Word, the spell checker suggests the following corrections: “allot / alto / a lot / alit / aloft”.

The spell checker does not mark anything as wrong in, “Why do allot of people despise Green Day?”

Last edited by nilep (2008-03-18 17:34:19)

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#3 2008-03-18 17:55:56

Breffni
Member
Registered: 2007-11-27
Posts: 11

Re: not in apposition to (i.e., not in a position to...)

You might well be right. “Not in apposition to [verb phrase]” seems difficult to account for syntactically as well as semantically, so a spell-checker error might be a more plausible explanation.

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