Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
The piles of stones stacked at the watery base of cliffs and concrete barriers are known as “riprap.†The word has been employed in this sense from the early nineteenth century. Prior to this “riprap†was a piece of nautical jargon used to describe tides. The idea that one nautical use led to the other is compelling. It also possible, however, that the rocky sense of “riprap†is derived from an earlier onomatopoetic word for repeated blows (a word still with us as a genre of fireworks).
Riffraff is someone low-class or something of no value. The word derives from the phrase “riff and raff†meaning “everything,†often phrased negatively as “neither riff nor raff.†The phrase has been with us since the late Middle Ages. The transformation from a neutral term to a negative term follows the pattern of “hoi polloi.”
Rocks piled in the water could be thought of as a kind of rubbish. No surprise, then, that a number of speakers substitute “riffraff†for “riprap.†Examples:
Transcribed interview: “These are erosion control projects, storm water treatment projects. It’s rock riffraff that you see along the road cuts.â€
Minutes of a board meeting: “With the guardrail in place, it is going to be virtually impossible for somebody to be competitive to bid to place riffraff in that method.â€
Post on a surfcasting forum: “there is hot spot just north of the beach ramp where were staying, and it is marked by a larger granite riffraff rock standing on it end in the sandâ€
Question on bass fishing forum: “I had always started fishing along riffraff’s around the dam area.â€
We would expect “riprap,†a relatively unknown term, to transform into “riffraff,†a better-known term. In a few cases, however, the switch goes inexplicably in the other direction:
A Cadillac forum: “Maybe we need a sub forum to keep the riprap out of our exclusive 04 V chats.â€
Poker forum: “I think with the popularity of online poker, they wont be able to keep the riprap out.â€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Maybe it’s vehement disparagement (overt despision) of chanted quasi-music—ripping rappers? Anyhow, both rip and rap have a bit of a negative aura about them, for me. Which reduces the inexplicability a bit.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Re transforming into a better-known term – I just ran across this
Which is why, in most cases, it is best to test candidates, you know, to weed out rift-raft like that. :-)
in a comment on what appears to be a reasonably literate tech blog: On Self-Promotion. Rift and raft separately qualify as better-known terms than riffraff, but together?
I’d never run into it before, so I was curious. 60,200 ghits??? I went through a few. In most of the cases it does appear to be an eggcorn for riffraff, but it’s also apparently a geological term:
Rift-raft tectonism is characterized by the presence of relatively undeformed blocks (rafts) separated by zones of intense deformation (rifts)....
(from Petroleum Geology of Northwest Europe: Proceedings of the 5th Conference via GoogleBooks).
It also appears in several articles on rafting as an apparent pun on riffraff: Paddlin’ For Garbage: Winner of Rift Raft River Race Awarded Golden Trash Can.
To close the circle:
the promblem with the lake is there is no cover like stumps or lilly pads,trees or anything it is a big circle of rift raft white rock they have put all the way around to keep the banks from erroting.
This is part of a question on an ask-the-experts site: Fishing – bass fishing in open water.
The expert who replies is a true gentleman. He unscrambles the eggcorn
Also, hitting the rip rap rocks in early morning and evening with fast moving lures may often pay off with a strike or two – especially if you find a school. Patches of stained water will often clue you in to where minnows and other bait fish are feeding along the rip rap.
without calling attention to it – or to the questioner’s other textual promblems.
With all three of these terms there seems to be considerable variation in binding of the syllables: they may be separated, hyphenated and compounded. For riprap, I’ll take the word(s) of my personal favorite authority: Riprap.
Last edited by TomRossen (2010-01-24 23:30:46)
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“Rift-raft” for “riff raff.” An eggcorn interpretation is plausible. “Raft” conveys the idea of insubstantiality, unsteadiness. As a replacement of “riprap,” the case for a “rift-raft” eggcorn is not so clear. Dunno. Perhaps the “raft” part suggests water.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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To clarify: I wasn’t suggesting “rift-raft” was an eggcorn for “riprap” – that was just one case in the fifty I went through, and the text it appeared in had a lot of other “promblems”.
Your point about “raft” makes sense – and “rift” connotes a break or dislocation that could conceivably be mapped onto social stratification….
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