Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
In Classics at University we were told that the term ‘if it augurs well’ is from the Roman practice of seeking fore tellings of the future from priests called Augurs. They would interpret the flight of birds and predict the turn of events.
Such Auguries were performed before any big event. So everyone would be happy if it augurs well.
The other term confused with “all goes well” is auger – a helical structure for drilling wood or moving grain or water when rotated.
It seems to me that future prediction is closer in meaning to the common “if it all goes well” than a screw that moves a material. The only possible commonality might be that when you start drilling you’ll have a good hole if it ‘augers well’ at the beginning.
I’d like some clarification on which really is the correct origin of this Eggcorn.
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Welcome to the forum, ivory. I’d say “auger” is probably a simple misspelling, but “all goes well” has at least a claim to eggcornicity. Not everyone is convinced—augurs well>>all goes well has an entry in the Eggcorn Database with a dissenting comment here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/318/all-goes/
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Pat – that’s why I posted. I regard the Eggcorn database entry as incorrect – but as it is not possible to comment on the page I posted a general topic. Perhaps I should be a little more emphatic?
Auger is NOT a misspelling, rather it refers to the helical device for moving material vertically whether water, grain, soil or the like.
Augur is from the Latin term referring to that foretelling of events by the flight of birds.
I think the scepticism is due to the lack of a classical education. A passing understanding of the impact that Greek and Latin has had on the English language would disabuse many of the notion that augurs well did not become all goes well.
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Ivory—I’m not sure I totally understand your main points here, but maybe more conversation will clarify our agreements/differences.
For the record, augurs>>all goes is one of those Database entries that I most had reservations about when I first made my way here, and I remember googling various phrases to see if I thought some people really were thinking of the usual meaning of “augurs” when they wrote “all goes.” I ended up being more or less convinced of its eggcornicity because of phrases like “it all goes well for the future”—which strikes me (as a native English speaker) as slightly odd; I’d be more likely to write “it will all go well in the future”—using the future tense and the preposition “in.” I’m pretty sure that at least some people who write “it all goes well for the future” have the “augurs well” template lurking somewhere in their brains.
The problem is though that there may be a bit of “convergent evolution” here—I think it’s also possible that some other people who write “it all goes well for the future” may mean exactly that. It’s a bit odd, but not out of the ballpark for native-speaker usage.
So I think I basically agree with you on the origin of “all goes well”—but with qualifications.
I think I continue to disagree with you about “augers.” If people meant “augurs well” and they wrote “augers well,” that’s probably a misspelling. Sure, “augers” is a word in English, but that doesn’t keep it from being a misspelling in this context. “Too” is a perfectly acceptable word, but if you write “I’m going too the store,” you’ve misspelled “to.” I guess one could argue that some people really do mean “augers well,” which might make it a malaprop rather than a misspelling. But I think very few people would be capable of that line of thinking. And lots and lots of people are capable of confusing ”-ur” spellings and ”-er” spellings. So let me be more emphatic: “augers well” is usually a misspelling.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-08-08 03:25:55)
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We’re talking across purposes here.
I thought you were suggesting that augers is not a correct spelling for anything – whereas it is the correct spelling for the helical structure used for moving grain.
I never meant to suggest that ‘augers well’ is correct – I meant my post to suggest that the only correct spelling is “augurs well” and that “all goes well” is incorrect… or an eggcorn. And that the origin is from the Latin term Augur – the procedure of divining the future from the flight of birds.
My late suggestion that the origin of the eggcorn may be from ‘augers well’ – the drilling process – was offhand and meant to be dismissed as implausible
So this has drifted off topic of my post which is that the Latin origin of “augurs well” should be in the article on the eggcorn.
Too many words have been spent on this due to confusion – apologies.
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