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Chris -- 2018-04-11
From New York Times Blog:
Why must Obama pass a litmust test that hillary and mccain do not have to?
To anticipate nilep’s critique (oh wait, that’s me), it is entirely possible that this is a spelling error. (The standard spelling is litmus.) It’s a fairly likely typos, since the typer may anticipate the t of the following word and type it twice. It’s also common for s to be followed by t in words like first or most, so a typo is entirely possible.
It’s just possible, though, that speakers associate the metaphorical “litmus test,” which Wikipedia defines as, “a question asked of a potential candidate for high office, the answer to which would determine whether… to proceed with the appointment or nomination,” with something that must be answered in a particular way.
A Google search for “litmust test” returns 1,290 hits. Most of them appear to mean the metaphorical sense, defined above, rather than the chemical test for pH using litmus. There also appears to be a pop song (or album?) called Litmust Test.
by Doug Edelman
Immigration Bill Will Be Litmust Test
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/25230.html
Why is the FEDERALIST SOCIETY the new litmust test
http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thr … forum_id=2
Schundler v. Forrester: A Real Republican Litmust Test
A true Republican litmus test
http://www.njrtl-pac.org/pac/core/pac_d … icleID=886
Note that the last one contains both litmust and litmus, making a slip seem likely.
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Previously posted here on 1/09/06, but I agree that it might be a misspelling.
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Hm, it came up just fine today on the forum’s search function under “litmust”. Wonder why I didn’t find it yesterday.
I also noticed this from Craig C Clarke in the original thread:
Just came across this one somewhere – did a search and found no entries, started typing up a new entry and when I searched Google for examples… up comes this pre-existing thread.
Doggone busted search.
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=230
Sorry for the repeat thread.
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