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Chris -- 2025-05-10

#1 2010-02-25 05:44:33

StanCarey
Member
From: Ireland
Registered: 2010-02-25
Posts: 2
Website

"intern" for "inter"

Hello everyone. Occasional visitor, first-time commenter!

Today I saw what might be a new example — at least, it’s new to me, it seems like an eggcorn, and I don’t see it in the database. The UK Telegraph, reporting on Dick Francis’s funeral, says that “He was interned [sic] next to his wife on Grand Cayman.”

Maybe this is a straightforward typo, but Francis’s remains are undoubtedly being detained, though not against his will. There is also a sense in which the author’s body was made internal to the earth.

(The OED mentions an early-17C-only usage of intern to mean “become incorporated or united with another being”.)


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#2 2010-02-25 19:44:13

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1709

Re: "intern" for "inter"

Welcome to the forum, Stan. I believe that interned for interred is a valid eggcorn. Following the logic you’ve presented, I looked for another way of seeing the burial, as an inturnment. That would make a connection to being turned into the earth, the turning of sod, the worm turning and maybe even turning in your grave. This first example is even stranger – looks like he/she’s suggesting that the body is to be moved after inturnment.

Driving with a stiff
You will need death certificate, ouptopsy papers if there was one and letter from where the body was inturned and where it is to be delivered.

Dr. Liverpool, I presume.....
he died in London in 1904 and his body was inturned in Pilbright/Surry’s cemetary.

Last edited by David Bird (2010-02-27 11:36:15)

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#3 2010-02-26 17:43:33

yanogator
Eggcornista
From: Ohio
Registered: 2007-06-07
Posts: 237

Re: "intern" for "inter"

I thought only cremated remains were inturned. : )

Bruce


“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin

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#4 2010-02-27 08:59:55

StanCarey
Member
From: Ireland
Registered: 2010-02-25
Posts: 2
Website

Re: "intern" for "inter"

Thank you for the welcome, David. I’m glad to hear that you consider it a valid eggcorn, though I don’t see what it has to do with dying “interstate” — apart from the partially overlapping theme.

That’ll be my newbie status, I suppose.


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#5 2020-07-13 21:57:31

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2767
Website

Re: "intern" for "inter"

Just ran across this one:

What Actually Happens In A Crematorium? […¶…]The door to the chamber only opens briefly to intern the body, in order to maintain the high temperatures required for the process.

Makes sense that the idea is to internalize or insert the body. If burial is seen as similarly making the body internal to the earth ― why not?


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#6 2020-07-13 22:03:16

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2767
Website

Re: "intern" for "inter"

(Stan’s comment about dying interstate is puzzling to me ― what is he referring to? Some comment you later edited out, Tocayotzin? (= honored name-bearer). Or Bruce?)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#7 2020-07-14 05:45:44

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1709

Re: "intern" for "inter"

It did look initially like something got lost in the mail there, Tocaytzin. It is an honour to be thus anointed by one I esteem so highly. A bit of eggchronology disinturned a post I submitted just after the above, about dying interstate. I don’t seem to have made an overt link to interned. Yanogator was in fine form in both posts.

BTW, by the grace of SARS-Cov-2, it is the case that I, and by extension my posts, have lost contact with my personal web enclave, www.cromulent.uqam.ca, wherein I had gently laid to rest, albeit still there for the viewing, all images with which I have engayed my posts across the years. So no cake wrecks until contact can be reestablished.

Last edited by David Bird (2020-07-14 05:48:53)

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