Eggcorn Forum

“Exercising ghosts” for “exorcising ghosts” is of course already in the Database. Excising ghosts is a lot rarer but may make better sense: if you excise a ghost, you get rid of it. However, I’m not sure these are (all) eggcorns. As David B’s recent find of “anti-gravy devices” illustrates, people can sometimes just omit syllables. I don’t think I would have found more than about two dozen unique hits even if I’d had the patience to work my way through some of the obvious permutations. Examples:

Excising ghosts, analyzing the history of German-Polish relations, German colonial Africa and the impact of both world wars on his family, Wackwitz’s personal study of his nation’s dark heritage is a rare gem. (Aug.)
http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Country … 1589880226

The Bears also excised a ghost from a recent past.
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles … n52817281/

Ghostbusters (sometimes written Ghost Busters) is a 1984 sci-fi comedy film about three parapsychologists who are fired from a New York City University, and start up their own business investigating and excising ghosts.
http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040 … ostbusters

Christine decided to fix her daughter and tried performing an excism on her, but was stopped by Geoff and Miles Copeland.
http://www.evri.com/concept/melody-jones-0×38e3c1

I found one instance of a possible reference to ghost excision, but it’s on a website that offers mnemonics for medical terms – this could just be a case of purposeful wordplay:

Ectomy – removal or excision (excising a ghost with ectoplasm)
http://www.speedlearner.2itb.com/Medica … nology.htm

“Ghost targets” are a problem in some types of radar, and they need to be removed from consideration. At least one technical writer (whoever wrote the relevant section of Advances in Bistatic Radar) has referred to this (probably knowingly) as “ghost excision.”

Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-07-16 00:19:44)