Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
First spotted here: http://www.getofftheinternet.org/the-fa … 009/03/24/
“It is no less than gut retching to see this happening.”
A quick Google shows this to be pretty common (over 1000 hits).
It’s perfectly understandable, as the association of guts with retching seems much stronger than with wrenching. A strict interpretation of ‘gut retching’ would be ‘retching up guts’, but even that works as a hyperbolic description of disgust. In fact, the only problem with it as a stand-alone phrase is that describing something as ‘gut retching’ suggests (to me, at any rate) that it’s performing the retching rather than inducing it.
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Gut trenching eggcorn, oxfordslacker. As you remarked “gut retching” is very widespread. It’s been remarked previously on the forum; in fact, it made one of the lists of “Best eggcorns of the year” for 2008 (link). That list makes good reading. I hope it will inspire you to look for other choice eggcorns.
The Eggcorn Forum is bipartite. This small f forum is separated into different subject areas, as seen on the Forum index. The small f forum can be searched using the Search facility listed on the banner above – there you’ll find many entries into the wide-ranging discussions inspired by gut retching. The second part of the Forum is the Eggcorn Database. These are some of the canonical iconic eggcornic entries that have been enshrined over the years. The Database must be searched using the second of the Google search bars that open on the right when you open the Database from the menu above.
By the way, glad to have you slacking on this site.
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