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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2009-10-10 09:07:47

johanssonmel
Member
Registered: 2009-10-10
Posts: 6

Dire rear for diarrhea

One of my faves. A quick Google yielded this entry from The Thailand QA forums:

http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9601

Whats good for dire rear
And don’t say eating bad food, that won’t wash
I just ate some bad squid yesterday and 6hrs to the minute was suffering bad cramps all night, and the rest!!
I have my own little remedies for this occurrance, but what does anyone else do??

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#2 2009-10-10 10:17:41

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2712
Website

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

Many have used this as a joke. Are you sure these aren’t doing it for fun rather than really thinking this was correct?


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#3 2009-10-10 11:20:16

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2850

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

“Dire rear” has been proposed at least twice on this forum.

I see many examples of “dire rear” that do not appear to be conscious jokes. The switch may originate as a joke, though (cf. OldTimer’s disease).

Same goes for “gastric/gas trick.” Oddly enough, “gastric” and “gas” have unrelated derivations. Example of the switch:

Advice on German Yahoo board: “sometimes it is comforting to baby’s to just cry its sorta of a self soothing thing for them to do.you didn’t say if she was throwing up at all but a lot of babies have sensitive stomachs its called gas-trick reflux and formula or breast milk can irritate them.”


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#4 2009-10-10 16:58:43

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

I’m with Kem (welcome back—we’re all waiting to see the pictures). “Dire rear” looked pretty suspect to me at first, but I’ve been persuaded that it’s an authentic usage for some people.

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#5 2009-10-12 15:41:18

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2850

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

Yeh, the pictures. They’re in my camera, which is in my backpack, which is in the Bureau des objets trouvés of a French regional bus company. I’m hoping they’ll return the backpack and its contents sometime this year. It’s no accident that the English word “bureaucracy” was borrowed from French.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#6 2009-10-15 02:52:20

jero12
Member
Registered: 2009-10-13
Posts: 1
Website

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

kem wrote:

“Dire rear” has been proposed at least twice on this forum.

you said it was proposed twice.. how come it was proposed twice?
does this mean that the first attempt was disregarded or let’s just say that some are not in favor of it?
why?


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#7 2009-10-16 16:54:23

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

That would be le bureau des objets trouvés of the regional bus company of an excellent wine-growing region I presume.

Dire rear is analogous to Peter’s direbolical. I poked around for other dire substitutions. Without pushing too hard I came upon “dire meter” for diameter, which doesn’t make much sense, and “dire metrically opposed” which does. On the other hand, might the “dire meter” of a circle provide an index of its circumstance? Also found another form recalling Peter’s classic “direbollockal”.

Global trade site
Inner dire meter of reel: 3.5, 4.5 or 5.5 inch
(http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:Rcc … clnk&gl=ca)

Wholesale from China
Frozen Fan Blower – Specifications:WEF-30Fan Blade Diremeter (Mm)

British political forum
How do I know 2 years down the line I might go for a job and they google (Online footprint) my name and notice the lack of harmony with other posters? Or indeed they may have participated themselves and be dire metrically opposed.
(http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index. … ikaze-bid/)

Gamer flamer site from the UK
he cheats and is totally direbollical when he don’t cheat is little weedy face off!
(http://www.thesgl.com/forums/topic/52269/)

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#8 2009-10-16 19:10:58

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2712
Website

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

jero12 wrote:

you said it was proposed twice.. how come it was proposed twice?
does this mean that the first attempt was disregarded or let’s just say that some are not in favor of it?
why?

What it means is that at least two people reported it, the second probably not realizing the first had done so. There isn’t a formal admission or acceptance/rejection procedure here: we talk about submissions, and sometimes somebody will say “this seems eggcornish to me” or “I think it misses real eggcornhood for x,y or z reasons”. Then once in a while the power that bes (Chris Waigl?) comes through and picks a few to put into the “database”. But there is a whole lot of good stuff that is just buried in the forum. The best way to find it is to use the second search engine (the google search) from the Database page.
.
I’m describing what is (as far as I know), not necessarily what should be. As things are, nobody should take non-appearance in the database as indicating unworthiness of a submission, or as a rejection of any sort. Inclusion there does mean that somebody with some authority liked it.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-10-16 19:12:49)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#9 2009-10-17 13:29:13

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

David’s last post was in response to a query by jero12. I’m pretty sure that jero is one of a new breed of spammers who join forums and make quick, often inane or pointless posts in order to leave a commercial link in their signature (which I don’t seem to have the access to delete without voiding the whole post—jero’s link is for a UK debt collection agency about which many people online have made disturbing allegations). I’ve deleted most of these, but I left jero’s because I wanted to have an example I could point Chris to. In the meantime, his question is probably one being asked by genuinely interested newcomers to the forum, so David’s reply is no doubt useful.

“Eva”—using the very suspicious “Cashusloans” handle—has also piqued my interest, but so far “she” hasn’t posted a commercial link.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-10-17 13:37:40)

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#10 2011-04-02 18:17:14

Dr dave the hat
Member
Registered: 2009-08-12
Posts: 8

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

I’ve long been a fan of The Dire Rear for diarrhoea – Terry Pratchett uses it, in the mouth1 of the barely literate Nanny Ogg, in Witches Abroad.

I’m pleased that it’s also been seen in the wild. With an eggcorn as homophonous as this, you wouldn’t necessarily know if you heard it in the wild; you’d have to see it written down to be sure.

But regarding the question

Are you sure these aren’t doing it for fun rather than really thinking this was correct?,

does something always have to have been seen ‘in the wild’ in order to be an eggcorn? Can a deliberately created implicit mock-rationalised etymology of a pun never be an eggcorn? A critter is still a critter, even if we only know it from domesticated examples…

It strikes me that, by analogy with malapropisms, a domesticated eggcornish word or phrase, even if only created for fun, could still be an eggcorn. I’d argue that even if Nanny Ogg were the only source of ‘the dire rear’, it should still qualify; after all, Mrs Malaprop was also a fictional character, but her utterances are just as much malapropisms as those of my mother-in-law (who, weighing twentysomething stone, is a woman of enormity) such as consistently using ‘Pacific’ for ‘specific’.

Or am I describing an oggcorn here… ?

1 (to be accurate, the pencil – she’s writing a postcard home.)

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#11 2011-04-02 19:24:14

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2850

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

Can a deliberately created implicit mock-rationalised etymology of a pun never be an eggcorn?

I think it could. It wouldn’t be an eggcorn for the punner, since it is not uttered with the belief that it is standard English. But someone hearing the pun could believe that it was the correct expression and, when the person eventually used it, it would become an eggcorn. We have discussed rotten eggcorns previously in connection with “old-timer’s disease:” http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3475


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#12 2011-04-04 21:49:27

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

Here I must admit that whenever I hear someone say, e.g., “Diary of Anne Frank” or “Diary of Samuel Johnson”, I hear it as “Diarrhea Anne Frank”, etc. Should I seek psychiatric help, or will frequent venting on Eggcorn Forum be sufficiently therapeutic (Imodium hasn’t helped)?

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#13 2011-04-04 22:26:00

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2850

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

Professional help, definitely. But first remove the bullets from all the weapons in your house and take them to the local police station.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#14 2013-12-23 19:19:51

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: Dire rear for diarrhea

kem wrote:

Same goes for “gastric/gas trick.” Oddly enough, “gastric” and “gas” have unrelated derivations.

I ran into an example of “gas trick” today. It was clearly a pun, but it inspired me to look for “gas trick” as an eggcorn. I googled various things such as “gas trick distress”, “gas trick ulcer”, etc. By far most of the hits were puns. The few that seemed possibly eggcornish were transcriptions of spoken word media such as TV or radio shows. That usually means that the eggcorn, if any, comes from the transcriber, not the speaker. Given that closed caption transcribers must type at extreme speeds, interpreting verbal input, they come up with a lot of misspellings and mishearings, so we should be careful about attributing eggcornicity to their output. Here’s a typical example, from a transcription of Jon Stewart’s TV show:

when people get obese and they have the gas trick bypass surgery…
http://archive.org/details/tv?time=201303&q=jon%20tu

Having said that, I found one example that was neither a pun nor from a transcript—the same example kem gives in post #3 above! And there is a plausible eggcornish meaning connection. The “gas trick” could refer to tricks the gas plays on us, such as embarrassing us in social situations, or, in some contexts such as “gas trick bypass” or “gas trick sleeve”, to tricks we use to cope with gas. So I’m not giving up hope that this fun substitution will end up on the official eggcorn list someday.

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