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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I only found five ghits, but they seem clearly eggcornish. One’s side seems, on the face of it, a rather odd place to get a thorn stuck. (This is actually what sent me looking—I wondered if the original might actually have been “hide”, with “side” becoming the now-dominant eggcorn as “hide” for “skin” became less common. I haven’t tried researching the origin of the phrase.)
Here are the hits:
“DISFUNCTIONAL FAMILY ” by Reem – RedBubble
A major thorn in his hide he paid a lot money to keep cops out of his eyes/ But these pigs were on some gangsta shit taking they lives/ ...
www.redbubble.com/people/ reem/writing/766720-disfunctional-family – 26k – Cached – Similar pages
archaeologyfieldwork.com :: View topic – Monte Verde
May 11, 2008 … Monte Verde is a huge thorn in his hide because it has produced very strong evidence of people occupying the Americas prior to Clovis. ...
www.archaeologyfieldwork.com/forums/viewtopic. php?p=7397&sid=adcb9931cc0b3dd8592eb28f78cf57c4 – 70k – Cached – Similar pages
keep me invisible. – by clandestine
I got the the boy with the thorn in his hide…very,very good!!!The Patrick mini polo 2.o,break dance,not hearts,some pins,a hat and easten sunrise girls …
www.friendsorenemies.com/ web/foe/photos/clandestine/?id=2392719 – 404k – Cached – Similar pages
The Sight – I Can’t Control My Venom’s Flow(Open)
The only reason he had picked her up was because she would have slowed him down had she walked…. she was becoming a thorn in his hide. ...
trattoblessing.proboards39.com/index.cgi?board=river& action=display&thread=4244&page=3 – 68k – Cached – Similar pages
Bit of a change, a Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic – FanFiction.Net
Atem had been like bittersweet thorn in his hide most of the year – like rose, actually. So sweet and inviting, but he hadn’t dared to approach in the fear …
www.fanfiction.net/s/3458020/29/Bit_of_a_change – Similar pages
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The “thorn in the side” idiom probably derives from the Hebrew Scriptures. In Numbers 33, in a section where the Lord warns the Israelites to extirpate the current inhabitants of the promised land, the King James version renders verse 55:
“But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.”
The KJ translation is a fairly literal rendering of the Masoretic Text Hebrew, so the metaphor behind the idiom-one’s side being irritated by a plant projection-is at least 2500 years old.
By the way, I notice that the idiom in Hebrew is eminently mouthworthy-it uses consonant repetition and terminal rhyme. Transliteration: litz-ni-nim be-tzid-de-chim. Perhaps the verbal pyrotechnics explain the coinage. The physical picture of a thorn in the side isn’t very evocative—why not a thorn in the foot, or in the hand, or, as the parallel phrase has it, in the eye? The Septuagint translators must also have puzzled over the image-the Greek translation of the MT has “spears in your sides.”
Last edited by kem (2008-06-05 21:21:15)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Impressive research, Kem! Do you read Hebrew? Wish I did….
Characteristically, though, I have a few quibbles. I actually find the “thorn in your side” phrase fairly visceral—that’s soft flesh, and the idea of something sharp piercing it is pretty twinge-inducing for me. And perhaps the Septuagint translators were consciously reinforcing the military context of the passage by replacing a thorn with the more threatening image of a weapon.
That “what-if?” part of my brain also wonders whether the Septuagint might actually be preserving an earlier reading, since the Septuagint is a good deal older than the MT. But then again, no recent translations that I can find follow the Greek, so it seems likely that the “thorn” reading is probably also turning up in some pre-Masoretic versions—such as the Dead Sea Scrolls texts of Numbers. Unfortunately, I don’t own a translation, so I can’t check that.
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You are correct, Patrick, that the Septuagint, the Hellenistic Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, preserves in some passages a textual tradition that is parallel to (i.e., not derived from) the Masoretic Text. So it is possible that the Septuagint translators saw something in front of them besides litzninim betziddechim, “thorns in your sides.”
A mss found in cave 4 at Qumran, 4Q27/4QNumbers, contains a goodly swath of the Book of Numbers. The mss shows some independence from the MT (The expansive 4Q27 readings are thought to track more closely with what is called the “Samaritan” textual tradition rather than with the Septuagint tradition.). I don’t have the text or a translation of 4Q27 at hand, but I do have an index to it, and the index indicates that Num 33:55 did not survive-the column that contains text breaks at verse 52. Shucks.
A parallel passage to Numbers 33:55, Joshua 23:13, has the expression “scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes.” I wonder if that might have been the original idiom and if the Numbers verse is corrupt in some way. The word “scourges” (whips) makes more sense than “thorns.” I think the familiarity of the English idiom may mislead us. If you heard the phrase “thorn in the side” and didn’t know the idiom, would you think it an apt metaphor? I spend a lot time rambling through brambles, and, while other parts of my body have donated their share of blood, I’ve yet to come away with a thorn lodged in my side.
Last edited by kem (2008-06-06 22:36:12)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Kem wrote:
If you heard the phrase “thorn in the side†and didn’t know the idiom, would you think it an apt metaphor?
This reminds me of the old Perry Mason reruns I watched obsessively as a kid. My favorite moments were always when Perry (or the detestable DA Hamilton Burger) would make an objection, and the judge would say, “The jury will disregard the foregoing testimony” (or something like that). I found that amazing—how can you disregard such a thing? Especially when someone just drew your attention to it even more emphatically? Can you will your own ignorance? Must be a grown-up thing, I figured.
A long way of saying I don’t trust myself to judge what reaction I would have if I could return to the Eden of idiomatic innocence. And as Mason and Burger demonstrated weekly, there are always at least two ways of spinning the same set of facts. I felt the “thorn in the side” phrase had a certain power precisely because that seems an unusual place for a thorn. I’ve had thorns in my tough feet, and many a blackberry bramble has taken revenge on my much-abused hands, but getting one in my side—yikes! The very thought of it is enough to get me looking for the nearest Canaanite idol I could smash.
Kem’s comments on Qumranic versions of Numbers led me to look for an online index of them—and somewhat to my surprise, I found one. It’s here (scroll down to the end):
http://www.ibr-bbr.org/IBRBulletin/BBR_ … croll.doc.
It’s a bit amazing: scroll 2Q7 breaks off at 33:53, and 4Q23 breaks off at 33:54. So close! There’s obviously an ancient, Dan Brown-type conspiracy out there somewhere bent on seeing to it that the members of the Eggcorn Forum never get to see what the earliest texts of Numbers 33:55 look like in the Hebrew.
[Edit: my link doesn’t seem to be working. You can find the index of Qumranic Numbers scrolls by googling this phrase: “The Preliminary Edition of the First Numbers Scroll” and then scrolling to the end.]
Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-06-07 04:39:30)
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Was it jorkel that suggested a “Great Quotes in Eggcornology” depository? This bon mot by Patrick would surely end up there:
the Eden of idiomatic innocence
Perhaps an idiomatic Eden, like the first one, is unattainable. But there are people who live closer and people who live further away. If you can’t see the flaming sword, you’re too far away.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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The only Hebrew word I know for “thorn,” and the one I think is most current in Israeli Hebrew, is “kotz.” So out of curiosity, I googled “Hebrew thorn,” and found this priceless deployment of the original snowclone:
Jerusalem Post
02-20-2004
Headline: A lily among thorns
Byline: YEHOSHUA SISKIN
Edition; Up Front
Section: Features
Page: 45
Friday, February 20, 2004—The Eskimo language has several dozen words for snow, Arabic has an even greater number of words for camel, and Hebrew, by some estimates, has 70 different words for thorn bush.
Incidentally, the “thorn” in “lily among thorns” is the wonderfully harsh word, “khokh.” Song of Songs, 2.2 “Like a lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the maidens (lit. “daughters.”) I don’t think a language that suffers from a perennial vocabulary shortage should waste 70 words on “thorn bush,” but I’m sure the desert is full of many different varieties. . .
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Returning to the original post: Since “thorn in his side” is probably derived from the metaphor employed in the Hebrew Scriptures, “thorn in his hide” would qualify as an eggcorn. Pronunciations of the two expressions are almost identical. The only drawback-”hide” is presumably less familiar than “side.” But a thorn in one’s hide is more common than a thorn in the side. This is a case where the substituted word is less familiar, but word-in-the-context-of-the-phrase is more familiar.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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