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#1 2009-06-23 00:26:47

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

"grudgework" for "drudgework"

For most of us, drudgework is work we do only grudgingly. 69 unique ghits. Examples:

On the grudgework totem it’s somewhere beneath fact-checking and research and at least a peg or two higher than other menial tasks such as fetching coffee.
http://www.rrj.ca/blog/2006/10/the_robo … ranscr.php

The email just arrived – thanks to whoever did the grudgework of compiling it.
http://forum.abestweb.com/archive/index … 96830.html

Getting ready for this overnight train trip included a decision to try to get some much overdue audio grudgework done.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/audio/issue45.html

Even though I wasn’t personally invested in the grudgework I was doing I gave it my all, with the work ethic my parents taught me, and afterwards my boss decided to bring me to her next campaign.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/ … and-a-job/

The OED doesn’t have an entry for “drudgework,” though the AHD and other dictionaries do. There is an entertaining OED discussion of the etymology of “drudge,” however:

[The derivation of this and the associated vb. is obscure: the n. is known c 1500, the vb. about 50 years later. As a rarer form of both, drugge, drug is also found 1550-1650. The forms and sense would both be satisfied by an OE. n. *drycgea ‘labourer’, from *dryge—*drugi-z ‘labour’, from u-grade drug- of dréogan to work, etc. (DREE v.), (cf. lyre, scyte, from léosan, scéotan, etc.); or by an OE. vb. *drycgean, W.Ger. *druggjan—*drugjan, from same vb.; but of these no actual trace has been found either in OE. or ME.]

In other words, they’re saying that they don’t know whether “drudge” had an Old English source – but if it did, they know what it looked like.

[Edit: The OED’s yogh-type thingies in drycgea, etc. wouldn’t convert, so I changed them to g’s—which is how they’re represented in, say, J. R. Clark Hall’s A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.]

Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-06-23 03:14:22)

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#2 2009-06-23 03:47:49

burred
Eggcornista
From: Montreal
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 1112

Re: "grudgework" for "drudgework"

Really great. Looking around I found many examples of “grudgery”, dozens of which seemed to be fully conscious uses with a meaning of “difficult slogging work unwillingly done”. A site on historical recruiting practices in the Canadian Navy notes, “It has also been said that in the reign of James I (1603-1625) men went to serve “with as great a grudgery as if it were to be slaves in the galleys”.

Edit: Several instances off the malaprop “skull-drudgery” for skullduggery are out there.

News commentary:
Wasn’t Jack Abramoff named in some skull-drudgery of Sarah Palin’s? Yeah, she lobbyed him for special interest money or something.
(http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/arc … 62171.aspx)

Murder mystery:
Slight of hand, trickery, fabrication and skull drudgery is not going to get Betty out of prison, it will only put more people in!
(http://books.google.ca/books?id=AUKc2A2 … &resnum=10)

Politics, by Rev. L.V. Harrell, 1928:
Its greatness consists not only in the wisdom and the unexcelled statesmanship which it exhibits, but also in its glorious blue sky altitude above the ways and tendencies of the low, mean political skull-drudgery, characteristic of the political pervert who is far more concerned about a seat on the throne of power and authority, than he is about any tradition, doctrine, or principle
(http://www.huntington.edu/ubhc/publicat … 114003.pdf)

Last edited by burred (2009-06-26 06:52:16)

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#3 2009-06-24 13:14:42

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: "grudgework" for "drudgework"

Indeed, a great eggcorn.

It’s also a roundtripper. I found one example of “nursing a drudge” (gaahh!) and a handful of web pages with “holding a drudge against,” but the most interesting “drudge << grudge” error on the web is probably “bedrudge.” The coinage “bedrudge” can be found on dozens of sites. An example:

Blog comment: “People are entitled to support whom they want. I don’t bedrudge each blogger her choice.”

Last edited by kem (2009-06-24 13:15:24)


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#4 2016-01-05 13:22:17

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: "grudgework" for "drudgework"

Here’s a twofer that carries the blend confusion further.

It was the end of the 1960’s and America’s population was in midflight to escape the dredges, torments and crowds of city life only to reestablished them in newly completed cookie cutter track homes.
find yr grave

Drudgery plus hedges plus dreads plus dregs. Hmm, that gives me an idea…

at this point in time, I’m willing to do some trudgework to get my vocabulary up to speed
comment on language geek

Trudgework requires endless dispirited slogging.

rock critic It’s hard to find just the right sound to help get you through the mundane circular trudgery that is this endless transitory life and this might be it.

marketer There is a distinct trudgery associated with work for most people I’ve ever met. It seems like hell. People discuss their jobs as though they are an achor tied to their leg which they must swim with forever more.

inspirational that moment of clarity to think about what your life really means? To rise above the daily trudgery and evaluate the purpose of being here?

gamers We demand the 9-5 trudgery and certain, unforgiving death that comes with being a cadet in Star Command!

Most instances of trudgery are intentional but lots seem to be eggcorns.

Last edited by David Bird (2016-01-05 13:24:16)

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#5 2016-01-05 23:56:56

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: "grudgework" for "drudgework"

Here’s a short related article.

And apropos of that:

So, you’re too WEAK to deal with your own problems, and you think it’s a good idea to trudge up something that should have been dead long ago, and let it get TORTURED some, just so it can solve YOUR problems for you?
gaming discussion

And on the days when I trudge up something rather yucky and expose it on a page that will hopefully be published for all to see, I may be rather untalkative.
blog

There are already signs Hillary’s presidential campaign will drudge up the weird, obsessive hatred the Boomer left developed for the Clintons in the 1990s.
article

How often do you drudge up the past…
Q&A site

So who better to take a deep dive and drudge up the first images of the watery world beneath Antarctica’s ancient glaciers?
article

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#6 2016-01-06 06:55:47

burred
Eggcornista
From: Montreal
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 1112

Re: "grudgework" for "drudgework"

Fuzzy spot. See also fpberger’s post.

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