Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I have frequently heard this in spoken use (as in “we have to submit an in-term report after 6 months and a final report at the end of the project”), but was never quite sure if this was just a mispronunciation. However, a Google search turned up 105 examples of “in-term report”, showing that at least some people believe this is the correct spelling. There were 4,460,000 hits for “interim report”. The eggcorn version does make intuitive sense – it sounds like a report that one writes within the term of a project, as opposed to a final report that you write when the project is finished. The actual derivation is of course from Latin, “ad interim” = “in the mean time”.
Examples
It seems that Kenneth McKay does not think that we have to do an in-term report.
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/busin … 0-0702.htm
Even if you were to (by some stroke of genius) able to release an in term report before the next election, it could be shelved as un-official and so still money well spent.
http://www.agentorangealert.com/pages/6/
I tried to post this in the database but it doesn’t seem to be showing up, so I’m not sure if I am doing something wrong.
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I also found 29 hits for “in-term solution”, e.g.,
Despite the Yankees’ struggles at second base this season, New York almost certainly will look outside the organization for an update. Of course, if injury and a lack of upper-level prospects lead the team to opt for an in-term solution for a couple months, Cosme looks like the best choice among Yankee minor leaguers.
http://www.rotohelp.com/archive/dailyrx/040510dr.html
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Added under your name, as you posted a draft. I’ve edited it somewhat: removed one of your cites, which talked about evaluation possibly in the middle of a school term, and added one for “on an in term basis”. I imagine the eggcorn shows up in all possible combinations of “interim” and is not specific to one collocation.
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He also recommended a wonderfully well-dressed and aggressive lawyer; we sued the ass off the City of New York for malpractice, misdiagnosis, and sexual abuse. We won a judgment of a million four, of which my counsel grabbed half a mil. I don’t begrudge him, but I do despise him a bit. It all happened quite a while ago, and there’s been a lot of action in the outerim.
autobiography
Singleton, so caveat eggtor.
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“in the outerim” = as things turned out = as an outcome = as things have worked out? On the outer edge of the main event? Or what? (Beautiful, whatever else it is.)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Yes, I think that’s the gist of it. If you’ve misunderstood ‘the interim’ as the period surrounding an event, then the outerim would be the time since. I got to outerim after hearing someone on the radio say, I thought, “in the inter rim”, as if it were two words. There are some of those out there too, beyond the outer rim of conventional discourse.
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