Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
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What do you think? It used to be an expression for encouragement by use of a promised reward that could never quite be reached. It seems to have eggcorned into the choice between a reward or a punishment. As the latter is now such a common expression, does it qualify?
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You’ve got it backward. The earliest and only traditional expression is “the carrot OR the stick,” expressing reward vs. punishment. I’ve written this up at
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/carrot.html
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Interesting. Thank you, Brian. Now I know. I guess I should have checked the OED first.
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The term that I have heard for a reward that it never quite within reach is “dangling a carrot”.
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I always understood it as “carrot on a stick”, refering to dangling a carrot from a stick, just in front of a donkey or horse, so that it will keep moving forward. Giving someone a motivation.
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