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Chris -- 2025-05-10
From a January 1 NYTimes article, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/world … n.html?hpw
“But in his statement, Mr. Moussavi said the government’s hammer-fisted approach would only undermine its security.”
A quick Google search failed to turn up many other examples of this (although I did find several uses of “hammer fisted” as the past tense of the verb, “to hammer fist” in boxing articles). However, it seems like such a nice example of an eggcorn and in such a high profile place, I thought it worth mentioning.
-Seth
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Welcome to the forum, sethwenger. An impressive first effort. Our database contains hand-fisted and just this year Pat turned up harm-fisted. But “hammer-fisted” is new.
I located a couple of web examples. I could probably find more if I looked harder:
A music review: “With a pianist of the calibre of Stephen Hough as soloist, this was quite a different Paganini Rhapsody from the usual routine, hammer-fisted effort.”
Forum post: “Trip suddenly has a brother who just happens to be gay (continuing the Star Trek books hammer-fisted efforts to make it look like the Star Trek future is accepting of gay males, though no lesbians yet, far as I can tell)...”
The sound presentations of “ham” and “hammer” diverge a little too much (i.e., the extra syllable in “hammer”) to make it a really choice eggcorn.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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