Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
My father advised I not fill-up when the gas station’s tank was low because I’d get settlements (sediments) from the bottom into my tank.
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Suggested here as well:
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Welcome to the forum, Shanj1.
This is an interesting one. “Settlement” and “sediment” can have a lot of semantic overlap. The “settlement tanks” used in waste water treatment remove sediment from water as it settles on the bottom. The process by which this occurs is “settlement,” and the layer on the bottom of the tank is sometimes referred to as the “settlement” as well, though “sediment” is also used. None of this is particularly eggcornish—sediment comes from Latin “sedere,” meaning “to sit” or (among other things) “to settle.”
But despite the etymology of “sediment,” we use it in ways we don’t use “settlement.” People talk of “sediments suspended in water,” but “settlements suspended in water” would be non-standard—both because of the plural you highlighted and because of the unsettled nature of those settlements. Examples like that might help the case for the eggcornicity of this one, but I couldn’t find any instances on the Web in a very quick check (they may well be out there if anyone cares to check more assiduously).
Even if we find such cases, however, people might still feel that “settlement” and “sediment” are too close in imagery for this to be an eggcorn.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-06-20 13:12:23)
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