Eggcorn Forum

If I were adding stanzas to the Ode to a Hidden Eggcorn I could include the line “A blindfold has no fold.”

The two Teutonic roots of the word “blindfold” are blind and fellen. The word’s second root describes the action of striking someone, usually with the purpose (or result) of knocking him/her down. We see vestiges of this old root in the verbs “befall” and “fell” (as in “to fell a tree”). So “blindfellen” originally meant to strike blind, to make temporarily blind by occluding the eyes.

The verb “blindfellen” eventually begat, from its past participle, the adjective “blindfelled.” The adjective was applied literally to a person who had lost visual perception and metaphorically to a heedless person, one whose mind was blinded. By the sixteenth century the spellings of the word included the modern “blindfold.” The adjective in its turn begat (1) a bastardized adjective, “blindfolded,” that absorbed the participial ending into the root, and (2) a noun referring to a person who had lost, literally or metaphorically, the ability to see. By the nineteenth century a further leap in the meaning of the noun switched the referent. Instead of being a person with bandaged eyes, a blindfold became the bandage itself.

The late semantic transfer of “blindfold” from a person to a bandage was influenced by, if not driven by, a folk etymology. Once the spelling “blindfold” had taken hold, users of the word began to see the word “fold” in “blindfold,” attributing the “fold” part of the word to the character of the cloth that covered the eyes. Only a well-folded cloth, as anyone knows who has played the game blind man’s buff with a head scarf, makes an effective mask.

And just so you don’t think that I dragged you through the mire of lexical history to bore you with another hidden eggcorn (I did, but I don’t want you think that), here is a “blindfold” eggcorn that is a little less hidden:

Comment on a blog post: “Is there a tandem TT we can do? Give me a blindfull and you can steer.”

A Yahoo group post on Rubik’s Cube: “Watch the video tv www.rubikscuberecord.com WOW! He solve the cube behind back (blindfull) and fast.” [This citation is interesting. The context demands the adjective/past participle “blindfolded.” The word actually used,“blindfull,” is a syllable short. The writer has apparently carried over the substitution from contexts where the sound maps well (i.e., exchanging the adjective blindfull” for the adjective “blindfold”) to one where it does not map (“blindfull” for “blindfolded”), suggesting the writer recognizes the semantic import of “full” in the word “blindfull” even while using it as a substitute for “fold.”]

Post on a myspace page: “As a producer you are the most distinctive and original of new electronic music. Your sound it’s unique and supreme. It’s immediately reconizable in a blindfull test”

Hard to get an exact feel for how many instances of this eggcorn can be found on the web. More than a dozen, I would say. Perhaps two dozen?

A short lexical footnote: Dictionaries do not recognize “blindful/blindfull” as a substitute for “blindfold,” of course. Curiously, they don’t recognize any meaning for “blindful/blindfull.” The single exception is the OED, which says “blindful” means the same as “blind,” tags it as obsolete and rare, and supplies a single 1621 citation. Lexicographers are seriously trailing the hounds on this word. Typing “blindful” or “blindfull” into a web search engine shows that the word is both current and widely used. It is found in contexts such as “blindful neglect,” “blindful eye,” “willingly blindful,” “blindful bliss,” and “blindful belief.” Paging Dr. Webster.

Last edited by kem (2010-12-05 00:05:13)