Eggcorn Forum

What about the phrase “The rain came barreling down on us”? I hadn’t ever thought very hard about this phrase, which seems to call forth rain barrels, which would be a large quantity of water. I’m noticing that a large number of the hits I see for “barreling down on” are referring to hurricanes or storms.

As support that the the imagery is for the container of water, as opposed to fast rolling motion of the barrel, I also see hits for “The rain came bucketing down”.

Last edited by fpberger (2010-08-11 16:08:09)

I was hoping to get more input on this one. (It’s OK to tell me I’m wrong if I am). It’s just that I haven’t seen any usage notes in a dictionary saying that “barrel down on” is legit in the examples I gave previously. Anyone have access to MWDEU?

Last edited by jorkel (2010-08-29 10:57:05)

I completely missed the bear (animal) aspect, David. Good catch with that.

Funny thing about these bear/barrel usages is that when I presented them to my wife she made the exact remarks that I had made in my post … without my leading her toward any particular conclusion. I guess when you get accustomed to hearing “bear down on” you do a double take when “barrel down on” surfaces.

I’ve always had the picture of a runaway cask, probably full of liquid or something at least equally heavy (e.g. nails), rolling unstoppably down a hill at the object. The notion of dangerous speed is much less prominent in bear down on, where (for me) the ideas of either heavy pressure on the object or of the subject looming higher and higher over the object as it approaches are strong.
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Charles Ruhl’s On Monosemy consists largely of a fascinating discussion of the incredibly polysemous verb bear ; I don’t have my copy available, but his discussion of bear down (on) would be worth consulting. (His overall thesis still makes me shake my head—he essentially argues that all the meanings of bear are not unrelated, and therefore concludes that the verb is monosemous rather than polysemous. What he is really arguing against is a straw-man view that all the meanings are unrelated, i.e. that the verb is a collection of accidental homophones. But that’s not what polysemy looks like, at all—of course polysemous meanings are related. Rarely have I read a book that I enjoyed and agreed with so thoroughly for 95% of what it said, but whose conclusions I disagreed with so violently.)

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-08-30 06:46:13)

I’m with DT and Partridge on this – on any kind of incline a runaway barrel is unstoppable by anything as insubstantial as a human.
Joe, “barrel down on” sounds unnatural to my ear too, but “barrel on down” doesn’t:

What gets me is the crazy drivers out there that just barrel on down the road like it was clear

The notion of unstoppability is present too in the medical sense of bearing down: the second stage of labour.

kem wrote:

“Down” is not the only adverbial particle used with the verb “barrel.” Even from the early days of the word’s use we have “barrel along,” “barrel up,” “barrel over.” The notion of speed is in the verb itself. I don’t see any hint in the early uses of knocking things over, crashing into. I wonder if a false etymology might be contributing to the current evolution of the word’s meaning.

How about the then-newly-minted barrel roll?

I’ve no idea when surfing terminology began leaking into mainstream usage, but I doubt it was as early as Kem’s carburetor. Worth considering though:

Surprisingly, the Peter Mel Machine works great in catching very fast, barreling waves up to head high.

For intermediate to experienced surfers: short and fast, barreling wave, shallow waters at the end.

The best boards are rounded pin and pintail boards that you would trust to get you through a very fast barrel section.

The Niagara falls barrel at least offers an imagery that might apply to storms barreling down on people—facetiously, of course. Otherwise, my mind is locked in the notion that things which “barrel down” tend to move along the road … rather than perpendicular to it!