Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
Unsurprisingly this is an intentional pun for most people, though not for all:
haiti earthquake was a really bad earthquake it was at number 7 on the rictus scale and it may take many years to rebild !!
an earthquake that measured 9.5 on the Rictus Scale
amongst others
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Very odd beast indeed. Both example look like bad spelling attempts… since if either utterer knew what rictus meant then the substitution would probably not have been made … and if it’s intentional I’m not sure I get the pun. Most unintentional reshapings replace an unfamiliar word with a more familiar one.
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