Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
”...foolish people, you know there are right out there on the utter fringes..” from a huffingtonpost comment
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“Utter” for “outer” is frequent on the web and is arguably an eggcorn. The two words may have borrowed from each other in the late medieval period-”outer” may even be an early eggcorn of “utter”-but modern speakers distinguish them.
The “outer->utter” switch feels like it is going in the wrong direction, though. “Outer” is the more frequently used term and “utter” is largely confined to highly contextual expressions (idioms, etc). “Utter->outer” would be the more eggcornish switch. Let me look…
Yes, there are many examples on the web of “outer” in place of “utter.” “Outer nonsense” and “in outer silence,” for example.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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