Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Reminded of this by kem’s cigarette-snubbing:
snubbing their noses at the authorities
Lawmakers once again snubbed their noses at Proposition 122
congrats! you snub your nose at convention and swim against the mainstream, willing to go to any lengths to fufill your twisted desires. hats off to you
www.helloquizzy.com/quizzy/results?quiz … 9429062580
Interestingly, a Spanish speaker asked what it means, and was told, among wrong answers like “blow your nose, wipe your nose”
Snub your Nose…..... “Hacer un desaire a alguien”, “Despreciar a alguien”, “Humillar a alguien”¶
Saludos!!
http://espanol.answers.yahoo.com/questi … QDk&show=7
[= give someone a snub, devalue someone, humiliate someone]
I didn’t find it on this site, though it’s been discussed at http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bi … -l&P=25747 (May 2007) I’ll copy James Harbeck’s commentary from there:
I don’t find “snub (X’s) nose(s)” in the Eggcorn Database, but I
think it might count as an eggcorn, since, though it’s a little
phonetically farther from “thumb” than the usual eggcorn would be
from its source—suggesting more of a misrecollection than a
mishearing—it is a reanalysis on the basis of what seems sensible
(nobody thumbs their nose anymore, it seems, although it was common
enough when I was a kid, but “snub nose” is a known collocation, and
there is clear influence from the normal use of the verb “snub”—which would in most cases work just fine in these contexts without
the nose—and probably a bit of influence from “snob” too), and the
phonetic details are similar enough to allow for substitution in
recollection (voiceless fricative, bilabial nasal, mid central
vowel). Or if I’m running too far with the eggcorn label, I’m sure
Arnold Zwicky will tell me, and we’ll just toss it in the malapropism
bin.
.
James Harbeck.
I wonder if those who think it means to blow/wipe the nose are getting some interference from snuff(le) and/or sniff(le).
Cf. also the Helenism “Thumb all of them in the nose.”
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-19 20:22:26)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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My first reaction was that this was an idiom blend. But when I say “thumb, thumb, thumb” over and over, I begin to hear something like “snub.” Perhaps it is an eggcorn.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I would vote idiom blend, too. It’s likely that snub nose has some influence, as James Harbeck suggested.
Since snub one’s nose seems to communicate both snub and thumb one’s nose, and since lexical portions (words) are present from each expression, it seems more like an idiom blend than an eggcorn as such.
Not that there is a clear line between the two categories.
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Just to underline nilep’s last comment, that being an idiom blend and being an eggcorn are by no means mutually exclusive categories. Blending is, I think, very likely to be an ingredient in the birth (sprouth?) of many eggcorns.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-23 11:21:59)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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