Eggcorn Forum

It is sometimes awkward that a discussion begins in the Database, where further discussion is no longer possible, without any corresponding entry in the Forum, where you can still talk about things.
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The restructuring of “behoove” into “be who of” is justly famous, and has been discussed here , and alluded to in a number of other places (e.g. here ). The variant “be hoo of / behoo of” is discussed here as well.
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I like the times I have found this where a grammatical deformation of the structure indicates that a syntactic restructuring, not just mispronunciation or misspelling of a fixed phrase, has taken place. E.g. insertion of the word “very” after the “be”:

it would be very who of you to just go ahead and get a new fuel pump and a known good used FPCU, replace both and see what happens.

or use of other tenses/moods/etc of the verb “to be” other than “be” itself.

The doctor doesn’t know the Mafia’s choice, so it is who of him/her to protect valuable townspeople and hope the others do not get shot.

try to stay current on what the afroementioned nine wise in Washington do. Their case law changes all the time, and it is who of us to keep abreast. That is good civics.

[Afroementioned, as well, is worthy of a glance or two at least. Might keep you from Eurocentrism, if nothing else.]
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(I didn’t find any examples of “being who of” or “was who of”, or “become/became who of”, but that may reflect my imperfection at finding the examples instead of their complete non-existence.)
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A possible (eggcornish) rationale for the substitution is that “being who” might be construed as “being human / rational / wise / emotionally perceptive” or something similar, which of course we ought to be, as opposed to being mechanical, unsympathetic, responding by rote, and so forth. “Being who” instead of “being what”, might we think of it? This rationale might help explain some of the above, and these:

As for patches, who knows, but I think it would be who of any game company to recall a game with major bugs and replace it rather than require a patch to be downloaded, especially on a fixed hardware setup. (Sharky Games forum, January 16, 2001)

Elementary school is the grade level in which I will be looking into and I felt that it would be who of me to learn a little about Elementary Schools before I start talking about certain topics like bullying.

This doesn’t mean that it won’t regenerate though, so it would be very who of us to keep an eye on it until there is no trace of it.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2022-09-28 21:20:03)