Eggcorn Forum

One interesting category of eggcorns are “domino eggcorns,” phrases that eggcorn eggcorns. “Bushwhack” may fit in this category.

You will find sources that say the word “bushwhack” was derived from a Dutch word for a forest warden, a “bosch-wachter.” In its journey into English the second half of the phrase got transformed into “whacker,” perhaps under the impression that bush rangers had to do a lot of machete work to get through some of the thicker stands of vegetation. That’s the first domino.

“Bushwhack” is not an easy word to retrieve in the heat of speech. Some of the retrieval failures look a lot like eggcorns. The dominoes fall.

One of these possible eggcornings is “pushwhack.” But the emphasis is on “one.” I could only find a single example on the web:

On a school bulletin board: “I couldn’t really find a way down, and it didn’t look like the kind of place I wanted to pushwhack 750’.” (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de … b929c6974e)

A second possible eggcorn of “bushwhack” is “bushwalk.” Tens of thousands of web pages record this word. Some of these “bushwalks” are literal uses of the word, however, and appear to have no connection to “bushwhack.” On these literal pages a bushwalk is simply a walk through an area with bushes. Other “bushwalk” mentions are legitimate extensions of an Aussie term for traipsing through the outback, the “bush.” In some of the former British colonies, especially those in the southern hemisphere, “bush” developed into a general term for land that was in a primitive state (This use of “bush” may have been derived from the Dutch “bosch,” “woods,” through some South African connections.). But even when the literal and antipodean references are subtracted, some examples of the word “bushwalk” remain that look suspiciously like replacements for “bushwhack.” Take these two, for example:

About a horse named “Rua” in Montana: “Rua’s bushwalked through deadfall late at night, navigated mud holes in a swamp, and even jogged around a truck stop all without batting an eye. She also happens to be drop dead gorgeous.” (http://www.ridethegreatdivide.com/page2.html)

Geocaching log from the UK: “It was not clear that anybody had been here for weeks. the Bracken blocked direct sighting of a path, so i bushwalked through them and spotted the big stone. ” (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de … 4d40fad49f)

Third, something eggcornical may be happening with the popular misspelling “bushwack.” “Wack” in itself calls nothing to mind, but I wonder if there could be a blending with “bivouac?” (A common nineteenth century spelling of “bivouac” was “bivwack.”) Since bivouacking is camping rough and bushwacking is traveling rough, the “wack” lexeme might carry the sense of “rough” across the blend. Don’t know, though. I may be gasping at straws.* It doesn’t take much mental energy to get from “whack” to “wack.” In many dialiects of English there is no auditory difference between the words. The example of “weedwacker” is instructive. “Weed Whacker” was an early brand name for the string trimmers that first appeared in the early 1970s. Eventually the brand name began to compete with the generic name, to the point where people started calling all string trimmers “weedwhackers.” Over the years the second part of the word changed its spelling from “whack” to “wack,” presumably because most people could not hear the difference between the two words. The frequency of “weedwacker/weed wacker” on the web now matches that of “weedwhacker/weed whacker.” This example suggests that replacing “bushwhack” with “bushwack” may not be semantically motivated.

*reported by klakritz in 2005, http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?pid=113

Last edited by kem (2008-12-16 12:12:19)