Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
I heard a government official this morning on our local NPR affiliate (on Scott Jagow’s “Marketplace Morning Report”) say that we are in a “downcline” economically. Jagow introduced the segment with a comment about the vocabulary of economics and then played the clip. Here is part of the transcript:
Henry Paulson: We know we’re in a sharp . . . downcline, and there’s no doubt that the American people know that the economy has turned down sharply. So to me, much less important is the label that’s placed on it today. Much more important is what we do about it. (http://marketplace.publicradio.org/disp … c_realism/)
Paulson paused between down and cline as he spoke the word, so it’s clear he knew he was using a nonstandard term. At the same time, he did not correct himself either. This was the first time I’ve heard this new term, but it apparently has been around for a little while (see examples below).
I have searched for this instance online but have not found it yet…. But a search for downcline does yield quite a few hits, which seem to be used both for incline and decline:
‘96 Blazer fuel pump problem : Chevy Truck Archivefull and I park it on a downcline (front lower than the rear), it won’t … the situation other than it’s a “downcline”...how steep is it? I’ve seen …
www.chevytrucktalk.com/chevy-truck-arch … t3827.html – 35k – Cached – Similar pages
Supporters of the War in Iraq – Page 13 – Liveleak ForumsRegradless of that comment what economic downcline you mean a WORLD downcline last time i checked chinas lost what 7-14 percent of there index over the past …
forums.liveleak.com/showthread.php?t=3438&page=13 – 59k – Cached – Similar pages
WoW Forums -> Post SearchEarthen Ring has been on a downcline for some time now. Re: Feedback on Silithus, Plaguelands, & Alte Posted By Chalindria on; Great post. ...
forums.worldofwarcraft.com/search.html;jsessionid=93CCE2BB7310DA66F604FA37204D8E56?forumId=10001&char… – 48k – Cached – Similar pages
Linux Today – internetnews.com: SGI Has ‘Eagle’ Eye for DoD’s DefenseJames Cornell – Subject: SGI’s Economic Downcline ( Apr 26, 2005, 21:30:36 ). Silicon Graphics Incorporated was once the premier graphical workstation …
www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn … HE-PB-0000 – 87k – Cached – Similar pages
what happened to lunar? [Archive] – Xbox 360 & Xbox ForumsThe no flaming rule is going to be the downcline of TXB, mark my words, it’s just going to bring self censorship which is going to kill the community and …
forum.teamxbox.com/archive/index.php/t-365911.html – 23k – Cached – Similar pages
I don’t find the word in my dictionary, but I suspect it may be in the next editions if it continues to spread. And can upcline be far behind?
One question: If we have the word incline, why not excline? Why, I wonder, is it decline?
Last edited by JonW719 (2008-03-18 17:04:29)
Feeling quite combobulated.
Offline
JonW719 illustrates, contrary to what Scott Jagow claimed, that Paulson did not quite ”[make] up a new word.”
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/disp … c_realism/
If we ignore the spacing in the transcript, we might note that “cline” is a standard – though infrequent – English word in biology or linguistics meaning roughly “a series of individual items along a continuum.”
Merriam Webster’s 10 Collegiate also gives cline as a form of the suffix -clinal “sloping,” and the Oxford English Dictionary has “cline v. to bow, incline,” but notes that it is obsolete.
Of course, Paulson didn’t mean any of these things. It’s pretty clear from the audio of his remarks that he was struggling to construct the utterance in progress. We may or may not call downcline an error, though, since it does seem to convey Paulson’s meaning – we are in a recession, but I’m not going to use that politically fraught word.
Offline