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Chris -- 2025-05-10
‘Gnash’ appears almost exclusively in a dental context, like gnaw, and possibly gnibble and gnag. And although m and n seem close companions, side by side on the keyboard for example and one trotting behind the other in the alphabet, their sounds don’t seem easily interchangeable. Nevertheless there is much mashing about.
“There is still a lot of crying and mashing of teeth,” said Dr. Hughes.
With much mashing of teeth and head scratching, I thought to check the rear lights, as I had added trailer lights awhile ago.
Seriously, so far she’s mashed her teeth, ground her teeth, pursed her teeth and so on in about every chapter of this book.
Manuel mashed his teeth together as rage filled him.
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Mashing food and such stuff with your teeth is marginally sayable, at least, for me. Mashing one tooth against another makes reasonable sense. That would be the eggcornish explanation. As you say, a fingerslip typo is another possibility.
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You are certainly right that in English (and a number of other languages) the labial/oral distinction of m vs. n is salient, much more so than the oral front/back tongue-placement distinction of n vs. ng. Many languages (Spanish, for one) don’t contrast those two pronunciations at all systematically.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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