Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
At the library where I work, a grad student emailed the systems list-serv to ask about problems using her own labtop in the, uh, computer lab. Thus, I suppose, the source of the confusion.
Just went to eBay and searched for labtop. 144 hits. “Did I mean laptop with 56,538 hits?” Yes and no.
I am also wondering if the visual similarity of letters p and b make this a particularly easy trap for non-native speakers to fall into.
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Hi Faith, welcome to the forum.
We’ve had a few mentions of “labtop” before. If you run the “Search” option above, you can enter it as a single word to locate those mentions.
I’m thinking that foreign speakers of English aren’t the only ones prone to saying “labtop.” It seems to roll off the tongue more easily than “lap top,” so maybe lazy speech invites the former.
I also think that “labtop” can be an eggcorn in many situations. Lab workers sometimes get exposed to new technology at work first, so maybe some assume that a “labtop” computer is specifically designed to assist data collection in the lab. It’s possible.
Last edited by jorkel (2008-04-17 16:38:18)
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