Eggcorn Forum

The English word “cachet” starts off as seventeenth-century French loan word in the idiom “ lettre de cachet.” A lettre de cachet was a sealed missive from the French king giving political directions to underlings. By the nineteenth century the word “cachet” had evolved a figurative sense: a cachet became a distinguishing mark, then a sign of prestige, an indication of high regard. A new Lamborghini in the driveway lends the owner a special cachet, we say. Express a taste for the music of the Atomic Kittens and your cachet vanishes in a puff of hormones.

A loanword that has retained its foreign pronunciation, “cachet” lends itself to eggcornical corruptions. In an earlier discussion members of this forum noted the confusion between “cache” and “cachet.”

Unnoted on the forum so far is the creative respelling of “cachet” as “cashet,” perhaps suggested by the association between cash and signs of prestige. Some examples:

Survivalist forum discussion of handguns: “It may not have the cashet of the Mag calibers or be the latest darling cartridge.”

Post to a forum discussion online auction sites: “Clickbank … just doesn’t have the cashet of paypal.”

Discussion on role-playing forum: “There was a certain cashet to living in uptown and SLA central. ”

An even more frequent misspelling of “cachet” is “catchet.” This corruption confuses a term whose basic sense relates to concealment (French cacher) with “catch,” a word derived from a verb for seizing, taking captive (Latin captare). Again, semantical motivations may fuel the substitution. Several possibilities suggest themselves. A cachet can be something that catches the attention of others. Or something worth catching. Or a catch in an otherwise bland personality.

Examples of “catchet” for “cachet:”

Blog post by Australian living in London: “The Harvey Nichols department store in Knightsbridge … has a certain catchet, and its management know how to cater to a certain clientele.”

Historical review in a post to a U. S. conservative political forum: “For a while that gave them a certain catchet, it let them take over university departments in the humanities and social sciences for instance.”

Review of automobile on the Auto Express site: “[T]he ECOmotive really lacks the visual catchet of Toyota’s celebrity-endorsed Prius …”

(I wonder how people pronounce “catchet.” Perhaps some of the thousands who spell the word in this way have never heard it pronounced and are saying “CATCH-it.”)