Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
I heard someone on the radio say something about “contacting” the flu—rather than “contracting”—and it was so subtle as to almost be missed. I’m thinking that many people who are familiar with the latter word might sometimes say the former by accident … so this would be unlike most eggcorns.
Clearly, germs are often spread via contact of some sort, so the word fits right in with the conversation, at least on a subliminal level. Indeed, there are dozens of examples of this substitution on websites produced by very educated people, so the usage seems accidental. Probably not a typo. Again, I think there’s something subliminal here: I wonder if the usage “came into contact with” is being conflated with “contracted.”
Among all the various examples, could it be that one or more utterer is not familiar with “contracted”?
Examples:
Lawrence CountyGoodspeed’During his service he contacted a disease which resulted in his death, in September, 1877. Our subject received a good education in the country schools and resided with his father …
www.tngenweb.org/lawrence/lawrbio.htm · Cached page
Rome’s Christian Emperors to CE 410In 310, Galerius contacted a disease which he believed to be the retribution of the god of the Christians. As he lay dying he issued an edict ending his persecution of the …
www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch24.htm · Cached page
Dog Home Insurance
The dog home insurance is there to help your dog and to help you cover the costs when you pet is ill, has contacted a disease, fallen victim to an accident, and if you have …
www.seefido.com/insurance/html/dog_home_insurance_.htm ·
Last edited by jorkel (2009-11-06 00:47:11)
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Both versions seem pretty unsatisfactory now you’ve brought them to our attention. Contracting a disease seems a deliberate act involving a legally binding agreement to become ill and contacting a disease suggests that closer acquaintance is being voluntarily sought, but neither ring true. The number of possible eggcorn ughits is 59, with a suspiciously neat 800 for the acorn – has anyone ever established a reasonable average typo error ratio I wonder?
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Perhaps the disease-related usage of contract is less common with the British, but it’s a pretty standard usage in The States…
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/contract
4. (tr) to acquire, incur, or become affected by (a disease, liability, debt, etc.)
I find that I can locate hundreds of examples of contact replacing contract depending on how I configure my Google search. Focusing on polio, for instance, I find these (among nearly 700 others)...
Campobello Island travel guide
It was at this summer cottage that F. D. Roosevelt contacted polio. To reach this Canadian island by car, the only access is via a bridge from the state of Maine which connects to …
www.world66.com/northamerica/canada/new … llo_island
Five Christmas Trees
She contacted polio when she was a three-year-old. Alice wore braces until she was in her teens. I spent more than one morning trying to repair the leather and iron contraptions so …
ezinearticles.com/?Five-Christmas-Trees&id=113104
The Digital Writer
She contacted polio at the age of 12. Early piano studies led to later studies in writing. Worked for Denise Levertov, The Sixties, in Berkeley; moved to New Mexico 1971 …
www.sunoasis.com/lynnpoems.html
Last edited by jorkel (2009-11-06 11:20:41)
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No, Joe, it’s standard here too, but I’d never looked closely at it. My numbers were for ‘contacted/contracted a disease’ and the ratio (59/800) seemed too high to be accounted for by typos, so I’m entirely open to an eggcornish interpretation.
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Seems to fit all the basic requirements of an eggcorn.
The usage of “contract” to refer to the acquisition of something noxious goes back to Elizabethan times. “Contact” as a verb is relatively modern—no older than the nineteenth century, and only widely used in the twentieth.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Actually, the eggcorn usage of contact that I suggested here does strike me as being a bit odd. When used as a verb, contact usually seems to involve a deliberate act. E.g., one might contact someone on the phone. But, one wouldn’t want to “contact” a disease. (It would almost make more sense to say that the disease contacted you, rather than the other way around!) Of course, there’s the notion of incidental contact—which isn’t deliberate—so maybe that’s implied. Even so, I can’t fully get my own mind into the mind of the utterer. Anyway, thanks for your support of this proposed eggcorn.
Last edited by jorkel (2009-11-06 16:22:07)
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Looks a bit like a blend of “come in contact with (the flu virus)” and “contract (the flu)”. Perhaps that’s why “contact the disease” looks odd. To “come in contact with” is passive but to “contact” is not.
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The logic of this one makes sense to me, and the fact that Jorkel’s first contact with it came via a radio program speaks it to its likely eggcornicity for someone.
Personally, though, I just don’t know what the numbers for something like “contacted polio” say about how widespread this is, or about what the size of the acorn/eggcorn ratio is. We all know that single-letter-omission reshapings are common, and they’re even more common when the result is something that would get by a spellchecker—like “contact” for “contract.”
For comparison, look at “subtacted/subtacting” instead of “subtracted/subtracting.” Both those reshapings are very common by our standards: they’re both polling about 350 ughits, roughly in the vicinity of “contacted polio.” And neither is likely to get past a spellchecker, so those numbers indicate that a lot of people are dropping the r in tr combinations; I’d assume the number of hits would be a good deal higher if “subtacted” were actually a common word.
The keyboard positions may have a role in all this. Many of us use the same finger for both t and r, and I bet a lot of people—like me—sort of “slide” into that r, making occasional misses not so unlikely.
As I said, I’d bet this is indeed an eggcorn for some, and I think it’s a solid one. But I don’t think we have (or can have) enough information to say whether the numbers indicate eggcornicity, and in fact I’d guess that most instances of “contacted polio,” etc. are typos because dropping the r in this particular cluster looks like a really common typing error.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-11-08 00:12:03)
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