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#1 2010-11-15 22:46:13

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

a slip second

i let off the throttle a slip second before i killed the engine (at 5K rpm)

I seem to remember the system looking for traction for a slip second before it kicked in.

I freaked for a slip second before realizing it was just another swimmer passing too close and not someone trying to drown me

His army training having ingrained slip-second decision-making in him, Jim made the choice

That slip second decision. Should i run and save her from the mud or get my camera out. The camera won!

The bullet was difficult to see and he could not deflect it with his lightsaber, so in a slip second decision he attempted to side step

Of course a split second will slip by you so fast you can hardly grasp it or use it. (Slippery things, seconds.) It may also be how long it takes you to slip up (not long). It also struck me how many of the contexts above have some other kind of slippage going on. There are quite a lot of these and they look to be purposeful, without any sign of awareness that they are non-standard.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-11-16 07:35:02)


*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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#2 2010-11-16 11:47:14

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

Re: a slip second

Not so many of these:

Lansley continued heading the expert train right to the line, with Montgomerie taking second with just a slipped second between them.

Jack shook as the boat slid past, a slipped second and they’d have been finished

Against the likes of Scotland and Namibia this means very little, but there could be just a slipped second to bring Joe Rokocoko down in the dying minutes

And how about this one?

it should help the Bengals passing game. Defenders have a miserable time covering receivers in slippery, soggy conditions because the receivers know where they’re going and the defenders don’t. The split second you have to react on a good surface is wiped away in a slipped second.

There’s a bit of a semantic shift, for me, from a second that has slipped by to one that someone has slipped past me. Slip second sounds more like the first, slipped second more like the second. But it’s a pretty subtle split/slip.
.
This adds to the probability that slip second is in some degree metathetic: slipped could be (and has been) spelt slipt, which is of course an anagram for split —as is spilt as well. Ah, yes:

Full power mode flashes for a spilt second before going out , energy saver mode works fine.

Kidd defines instinct as “being able to be creative in a spilt second.”

For a spilt second, surprise held her speechless. She simply could not believe what she was hearing

(This one has many hits.) It of course has rather different semantic connections, but again they are reasonable enough to make it eggcornish: one wasted second, and, as they say in Spanish, la regaste ‘you spilled it = you blew your chance’.
.
Of course, ken was here first (though not with the particular spilt second collocation, at least that I saw).

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-11-16 11:59:13)


*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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#3 2010-11-16 17:12:45

Peter Forster
Eggcornista
From: UK
Registered: 2006-09-06
Posts: 1224

Re: a slip second

Typo or not, slit second is a variant which appears to me shorter in duration than the acorn and even its matching simbling, spit second, seems to possess the necessary brevity for eggcornish interpretation.

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#4 2010-11-16 19:00:57

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

Re: a slip second

Slit and spit seconds as well. Very good!
.
Though it does raise one of my recurrent scruples: it is astounding what a large proportion of errors one can think of wind up meaning something construable if not downright reasonable. Are these eggcorns, or other kinds of errors that we as hearers/readers think eggcornish? Do their users actually have in mind the imagery they awake in us? Are those users ignorant of the oddity of that imagery as compared with what is standardly expected?
.
Re why so many of these make sense, we have a context supporting any meaning that can amount to “slight, small”, and the s -initial consonant clusters in English seem to have a sound-symbolic (synesthetic/iconic and therefore natural?) tendency to link up with such meanings.


*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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#5 2010-12-21 19:29:16

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2853

Re: a slip second

we have a context supporting any meaning that can amount to “slight, small”, s -initial consonant clusters in English seem to have a sound-symbolic (synesthetic/iconic and therefore natural?) tendency to link up with such meanings.

Thought you would slip one by me, eh?

Initial s- is a quasi-morpheme for “small?” You mean like in space, span, spill, stupendous, super, and sufficient?


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#6 2010-12-21 20:06:28

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

Re: a slip second

No way I can do that without I get slapped in the face. Though of course super and sufficient don’t have initial consonant clusters. Also of course “a tendency to link up” does not mean you will find a linkage every time. Perhaps I should have said, however, initial s-clusters followed by [ι] (short “i”) in a single-syllable stem.


*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 2010-12-22 01:27:01

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2853

Re: a slip second

Sorry, just couldn’t resist a little yank on the chain. I’ll try to be good.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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