Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
And all this after you infactically said you would be patient.
The salesman stood on his head and guaranteed infactically that this tower would fit as it was … This so called salesman infactically
says it will fit.
Included is a recent Government economic study of the region. That infactically contradicts most of your “limited research” in this
matter.
Hillary Clinton gave an infactic ” no” because she was concerned of being used for ” propaganda purposes”
If you have to, get a little more infactic about letting him know you need some sleep and the TV is keeping you awake.
A very nice eggcornical analysis of emphatic, in fact.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-06-14 10:35:23)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Interesting find! It seems to be pretty common and to fit at least some of the criteria for eggcornicity, such using a more common word (or phrase: in fact) in a new way, and being a rather obvious replacement for a correct word (emphatic)...
Here are other examples:
What exactly to the Police Attend …... – Topic Powered by eve …After a while they started knocking on window looking to use the facilites and were given a brisk and infactic no – but the men egged on by the woman (why …
community.channel4.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/69460501/m/9350077498 – 152k – Cached – Similar pages
Controversial Clinic for the ‘Chemically Sensitive [Archive …I cannot say infactically that the diagnosis is completely bogus but can say infactically it is HIGHLY unreliable and open to much interpretation. ...
forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-109525.html – 37k – Cached – Similar pages
SEO/SEM on a pay-per-preformance baseAbsolutely state infactically exactly what your responsibilities will be….this must be spelled out to the letter or you might find yourself being sucked …
www.webmasterworld.com/forum31/720.htm – Similar pages
Feeling quite combobulated.
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There’s some interesting semantic drift going on too, though perhaps it is happening simultaneously (or previously) within “emphatic” itself: “infactically” is being used to mean “precisely” in JonW719’s last example, for instance, and it seems to be used in a number of sports contexts to mean something like “dramatically”, “decisively”, or “overwhelmingly”, i.e. “not just barely”. E.g.
This image captures Englands favourite driver, Nigel Mansell, during the first ever GP Master series. Nigel has won the first 2 races in infactic style.
He has justified your faith with an infactic win!
(feeling rather crepit, myself)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-06-14 10:36:58)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Very nice. I suspect there are two factors that lead some speakers to reshape emphatic/ emphatically around in fact: phonology, and frequency.
In terms of phonology, the pronunciation of emphatic is perhaps closer to in fact than to emphasis or emphasize, at least in casual speech. Therefore, a speaker who hears emphatic for the first time and who already knows both emphasis and in fact might be more likely to connect the new form to the latter. Ergo, infactic.
In terms of frequency, in fact is more common than emphatic or other related forms. This makes the phonological reshaping above relatively more likely. The Davies/BYU Corpus of American English has 66,263 instances of in fact, versus 684 instances of emphatic. Even the combination of emphatic/ emphasis/ emphasize and derived forms (including a few apparent misspellings, such as EMPHAIZED) totals fewer than 34,000.
Add to that the semantic story as described by JonW719 and DavidTuggy – an emphatic declaration is averred to be a fact – and you have a clear path to reshaping, possibly to eggcornicity.
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Wow—instantly one of my favorites.
I wanted to know how common this was, so I did some Google counts. The first number is raw hits; the second is unique hits:
Infactic 106/57
Infactically 178/89
Infatic 1550/257
Infatically 1240/230
Fairly respectable numbers for such an extreme reshaping. “Infatic” doesn’t seem very eggcornish, but rather a more or less phonetic spelling. I wonder whether people leapt directly to “infactic” from “emphatic,” or whether the existence of the more widespread “infatic” served as a kind of stepping stone on the way to the eggcorn.
I found more examples of David’s semantic drift, too. This one’s a bit odd:
If it was not true she never would have kept the child from the father. More infactically, the father would have never stayed in hiding if it was not true!
http://wrongfullyaccusedinusa.blogspot. … -tree.html
With “more infactically,” I guess the person means something like “moreover/furthermore/more to the point.” I don’t recall having seen “more emphatically” used this way. It often seems to me that the further reshapings get from the look of the standard form, the more susceptible they are to having meanings imposed upon them that weren’t typical of the original phrase. I remember something similar with the phrase “in the mist” posted here long ago.
There’s also this:
The voice of the Iowa State community can most infactically be heard Wednesday, at a mock election sponsored by the Government of the Student Body and the Daily.
http://media.www.iowastatedaily.com/med … 6575.shtml
It seems odd that something may be heard (rather than said) “infactically,” but that may be within the range of uses of “emphatically.”
Finally, I noticed a thread on another site where posters were puzzling over the use of the word “infatic” in the song “Are You” by the British dance-pop band Atomic Kitten (it’s off their Right Now album). The first poster said they’d found this in the album’s lyric booklet:
<< Oh I wish you’d ask me how i feel
I’d say that i’m INFATIC >>
is infatic even a word? I know that EMPHATIC is a word…but i don’t think infatic is a word…
http://forum.generationnetwork.co.uk/ar … -5935.html
Other posters on the thread guessed that it’s an innovation intended to mean “infatuated”—which actually seems to work better with the lyrics than “emphatic.”
Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-06-12 15:11:14)
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patschwieterman wrote:
<snip> “Infatic” doesn’t seem very eggcornish, but rather a more or less phonetic spelling. I wonder whether people leapt directly to “infactic” from “emphatic,” or whether the existence of the more widespread “infatic” served as a kind of stepping stone on the way to the eggcorn.
DT comments: Yes, it would seem very likely that infatic, which shows that people have unlinked what they hear from “emphasis” etc., is/was a stepping stone for some. I’d noticed infatic, but didn’t inclute it. (There’s you another one, but probably more blendish than eggcornish: include + recruit ? It’s documented.)
patschwieterman wrote:
I found more examples of David’s semantic drift, too. This one’s a bit odd:
If it was not true she never would have kept the child from the father. More infactically, the father would have never stayed in hiding if it was not true
http://wrongfullyaccusedinusa.blogspot. … -tree.html
With “more infactically,” I guess the person means something like “moreover/furthermore/more to the point.” I don’t recall having seen “more emphatically” used this way. It often seems to me that the further reshapings get from the look of the standard form, the more susceptible they are to having meanings imposed upon them that weren’t typical of the original phrase. I remember something similar with the phrase “in the mist” posted here long ago.
DT comments: This case seems to me likely to be based on the eggcornish reanalysis. “In fact” is very often used to mean “moreover/furthermore/more to the point”. I wouldn’t expect this meaning to show up with “emphatically” spelled right.
patschwieterman wrote:
There’s also this:
The voice of the Iowa State community can most infactically be heard Wednesday, at a mock election sponsored by the Government of the Student Body and the Daily.
http://media.www.iowastatedaily.com/med … 6575.shtml
It seems odd that something may be heard (rather than said) “infactically,” but that may be within the range of uses of “emphatically.”
DT comments: Yes, this might fit in the uses of emphatic. It also collocates with the idea of winning infactically in sports: winning dramatically, incontrovertibly, obviously, ...
patschwieterman wrote:
Finally, I noticed a thread on another site where posters were puzzling over the use of the word “infatic” in the song “Are You” by the British dance-pop band Atomic Kitten (it’s off their Right Now album). The first poster said they’d found this in the album’s lyric booklet:
<< Oh I wish you’d ask me how i feel
I’d say that i’m INFATIC >>
is infatic even a word? I know that EMPHATIC is a word…but i don’t think infatic is a word…
http://forum.generationnetwork.co.uk/ar … -5935.html
Other posters on the thread guessed that it’s an innovation intended to mean “infatuated”—which actually seems to work better with the lyrics than “emphatic.”
DT comments:
Some other funny ones I noticed seem to fit with both the puzzlement and the odd folk etymology/definition: e.g.
Infactic is a real word – it means to obsesse/stress about something
Timelines are not infactic, unless dated themselves, by astrologically charts or catatrophics events .
= trustworthily factual? (catatrophics is nice, too …)
Hey, you make it seem like I am praising the hummer, I actually hate seeing them, they are an infactic waste of money, gas hog, view blocking p.o.s. ...
= egregious? obnoxious?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Wow. Between Infactic and Ifso facto, we’re getting some nice eggcorns lately. I can hardly wait to try them out in conversation!
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jorkel wrote:
Wow. Between Infactic and Ifso facto, we’re getting some nice eggcorns lately. I can hardly wait to try them out in conversation
Let us know if anybody notices! (It is a constant amazement to me what bizeer things can be said and without raising a red flag in anybody’s eyebrows.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-06-14 10:41:53)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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See also infaces for emphasis?
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