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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2009-10-15 20:44:00

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2872

circumstance << circumference

Heard on the bus today, from a teen chatting on a cell phone about math homework: “the circumstance of a circle”

Not an eggcorn, perhaps, given the lack of sound parallelism. The imageries correspond well: the circumstance of a circle is defined by its circumference. About a dozen examples of the switch on the web. Here are four of them:

Personal site on camera stuff: “If the edges of the rectangle extends to the circumstance of the circle then the camera is considered to have captured full frame”

Online math exercises: “Find the circumstance of the circle below”

Question on a business education site: “P, Q, S and R are points on the circumstance of a circle of radius r, such that PQR is an equilateral triangle and PS is a diameter of the circle. What is the perimeter of the quadrilateral PQSR?”

On the site of a surveying company: “the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes calculated the circumstance of the earth to within 227 miles of its true distance”


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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