Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
There are lots of Google hits for the misspellings vaguery, vagueries, vaguary, vaguaries, vagery/vageries. Some are just misspellings, but some are true eggcorns with a meaning something like “instance of vagueness.” In other words, vague + -ery or _-ary_.
Examples from the wild:
A blog entry on the Duke Lacrosse scandal
Okay, Brodhead, but you’ve already admitted that three Lacrosse players have been identified. How is that “unclear”? You want to cloud the issue by saying well, we don’t really know who was there, we don’t really know what happened, blah blah blah, you get my point. His other principle, which apparently takes center stage the way the statement has been framed, is that they don’t know who did it. He offers up all sorts of vaguaries which suggest the original statement of the victim is somehow (ahem) innaccurate. Big surprise.
From the Wikipedia entry on unsolved problems in philosophy
Clearly, unsolved philosophical problems exist in the lay sense (e.g. “What is the meaning of life?”, “Where did we come from?”, “What is reality?”). However, philosophers generally accord serious philosophical problems specific names or questions, which indicate a particular method of attack or line of reasoning. As a result, broad and untenable topics become manageable. It would therefore be beyond the scope of this article to categorize “life” (and similar vaguaries) as an unsolved philosophical problem.
From a political blog, The Third Avenue
This week, President Bush is dusting off his immigration policy in typical fashion: all vagueries and platitudes, no specifics. Why no details, it is not as Bush tells the press, because of his view of the constitutional roles that the executitve and legislative branches play, rather, it is a way to sneak in radicial changes and radical policy that would otherwise be unpopular with either his base or the American people.
From a journal entry dated 8/18/01
Direct in song lyrics makes you go, “Oh. Ok.” and then you get it and then the song’s over and poof. Know what I mean? Not that I’m advocating enigmatic vaguery, but it’s like, it’s not an essay, it’s a song.
You haven’t answered anything at all. All you’ve done is mention some very generalized concepts and simply made the claim that they represent reality. I’m asking you to actually substantiate rather than default to mythological vaguery.
From a newsgroup posting
I don’t know what the friggin’ big deal is with saying outright, what they are tiptoeing around by vague implications.
Either a repair install will or won’t work in the OP’s situation, they should stop with the vageries, and give the OP a definitive answer.
Title of a post to the gmp-devel mailing list
GMP vaguaries when converting strings to integers
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