Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I listen to news radio regularly and I’ve always been a bit annoyed by the use of the phrase “quote-unquote” followed by a long quotation because it may be difficult to tell when the quote ends. This morning I found this on Reddit:
> … she will quote on quote kill herself.
Reddit is a wonderful place to observe colloquial English but if you are a stickler for punctuation and grammar i would not recommend reading any of the popular subreddits.
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“Quote on quote” has been briefly mentioned a couple times in these parts, such as here.
It makes sense as an eggcorn to me because the phrase “quote on quote” could refer to the fact that they always come in pairs.
Welcome to the Eggcorn Forum, anomrabbit!
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Ah, that’s what I get for trying to search on my phone. At least those examples use actual quotation marks.
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Here’s an example I recently encountered:
Anson Mount, who plays Black Bolt, adds: “I think that the quote-on-quote awkwardness at the [TCAs] was blown out of proportions.”
https://www.comicbookmovie.com/tv/marve … cs-a153552
Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2017-09-04 08:58:14)
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I think it was “quote – end quote†for me, and “quote unquote†could be a plausible eggcorn for that. Or vice versa, of course. “Quote on quote†could be eggcorned off either of those.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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