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Chris -- 2025-05-10
A very natural eggcorn that is so smooth that you might wonder if it was not laid intentionally, and it no doubt is at times. Gentle birth pangs. Resort and resource spring from distinct French roots, but they are close enough in meaning that each may contribute to the definition of the other. But it’s fair to say that “as a last resort” and “court of last resort” are the standard idioms, and a last resort is more desperate than a last resource. Seen yesterday on reddit. More than 150 raw ghits in the form “only as a last resource”. The second one is piquant.
“But when a violent dog came in, we gave it a chance to be domesticated and if it was just impossible, then it would be euthanized but only as a last resource.”
“This was a court of last resource to which all men resorted when they were hard pressed by wind or weather.”
e-novel: Six-gun Country
“While trying to kill him I somehow went through the first train car and got stuck too. I was forced to resource to suicide lol. ”
gamers
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The second is indeed piquant, and the third transformative, verbifying the noun. Another example:
she could change employers more easily than husbands without resourcing to murder
(What nasty things we might be forced to resource to.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2022-09-09 12:57:18)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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The binding of “last” to “resources” in the idiomatic “last resource(s)”
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c … moothing=3
contributes to the slide into the substitution for “last resort”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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By George, you’re right. They were once neck and neck.
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