Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A fair number of websites and other places (this came to my attention from the radio) quote Louis Farrakhan as saying (modulo wording adjustments) that
the White man is the skunk of the earth.
I did find one other probably independent citation, but it’s likely not by a native speaker of English:
Shame on UMNOPUTRA. The bottom of the barrel, the skunk of the earth.¶ It take a former Prime Mininster to enlighten the masses. There are thousands of these irregularites and scandalous hideous acts, we all need to expose them. Expose the crimes, the sin the UMNOPUTRA had done to Malaysian.
The trope is used over and over (undoubtedly consciously and quite possibly in allusion to Farrakhan) in a blog about
[…] cilantro, and why I hate it:¶ It’s the skunk of the earth, it’s everywhere, it’s completely overwhelming, it makes me uncomfortable in restaurants and people love it but I don’t (I feel ostracized). ¶ […] distinguishing between many politicians and general skunk of the earthiness is no easy feat, but for me, the skunkiest of them all is Mike Huckabee
It seems there may be an eggcorn lurking there for someone, anyway. Maybe Farrakhan (assuming he was not misquoted)?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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