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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Heard this morning on a political affairs radio program.
To dive into the fray is to join in the brawl, from an Anglo-French root word effrei, for “to remove from one’s peace”. Afraid is from the same origin; it replaced P.Gmc.-rooted afeard, in what surely was an eggcornish swap. In the fray you might be flayed, meaning “skinned, stripped”, from the Anglo-Saxon, having cognates in Swedish, Danish and M. Dutch. Jumping into the “flay” fits the pattern of substituting an uncommon word for one yet more rarefied.
Blog
Gordon has had a tendency to stick his nose into the flay numerous times in the past, and as usual, he came out smelling like a rose
.
[unfortunately roses can’t smell]
Pangram contest entry
Don Quixote views the black windmill, hugs his faithful Rozinante, and jumps into the flay
Forum
Jerry was banned after a little spat a while back and just has no current interest in coming back into the flay.
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I’m not sure whether “flay” or “fray” is more familiar to English speakers. COCA reports “fray” in its database ten times more often than it reports “flay.”
The substitution of “flay” and “fray” goes both ways: look at all these examples of “frayed alive.”
On a slightly different not, have you noticed how frequently speakers of English confuse “fillet” and “flay?” Though the meanings of the two terms are similar-both refer to extracting flesh in strips-they derive from entirely different sources, one Germanic, as David notes, the other Latinate (“fillet” is from L. filum, thread). When fish are filleted, they are often said to be “flayed”-a switch that could arguably be a legitimate use of “flay.” But when tortured people are said to be “filleted alive,” we are in eggcorn territory.
Some of the many examples of “fillet” for “flay:”
From an interview: “Yeah, those are all the actual painting in a gallery in Bruges. People being filleted alive, beheadings, the most horrible tortures. ”
Blog entry: “They make an ungodly shriek that sounds like both of them are being filleted alive.”
Web fantasy fiction: “The court tangibly relaxed. The odds of someone being filleted alive were drastically reduced.”
Last edited by kem (2010-04-10 11:17:21)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I see you’re right about the relative familiarity of flay and fray. Not only that, but most of the flay references are to an eponymous chef, Bobby Flay. Or as a CNN transcript has it, “iron chef Bobby fillet”.
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This is a much easier switch for those who pronounce fillet as if it were filet .
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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