Eggcorn Forum

This week’s (4/20/09) New Yorker has a retrospective piece on Katherine Anne Porter. The author quotes from a contemporaneous and unenthusiastic review by Edmund Wilson of one of Porter’s short story collections:

’... he is deterred by a nibbling suspicion that he may not have grasped it’s meaning.’

In my book, the great Mr. Wilson gets to write whatever he likes, but for anyone else, this is an eggcorn. And
‘nibbling’ adds a connotation of hesitancy to the doubts and suspicions.

Nibbling doubt’ gets 200+ ghits. ‘Nibbling suspicion’ is uncommon:

There’s a nibbling doubt in the back of your head that you’re going to spend eternity in a lake of fire, and if you’re cool with that. I’m cool with that.
www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.90056?page=2

A raspy congestion betrayed a nibbling doubt that he fully deserved his indignation.
books.google.com/books?isbn=0312312059…

And although I guessed the murderer early on, a nibbling doubt lingered throughout the remainder of the book.
www.epinions.com/review/Book_The_Chocol … 5175088772

Although now I have a nibbling suspicion that when I went back to check it, I reset it again to the opposite of what it was …
www.owldaughter.org/blog/?m=20040706

Or, as a small, nibbling suspicion told me, was she one of the safeguards used to befog the enemy trail?
books.google.com/books?isbn=0765300524

I’ve been experiencing a nibbling suspicion that something has gone terribly wrong.
www.opennntp.com/Politics-Republicans/s … 93359.html