Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A bulwark is a protective structure/embankment and the possible eggcorn ‘bullwork’ has appropriate associations of strength and solidity. Apparently, ‘bullwork’ can also mean ‘mindless drudgery’, which doesn’t help much, but I do recall a Charles Atlas- type device called a ‘bullworker’ which was meant to make men more muscular…
It can also serve a purpose in more immature democracies to act as a bullwork against dictatorship. In Spain, the monarchy was instrumental in transitioning …
www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=414916 – 152k – Cached
God help us if the Senate ends up like the house with it’s far right wing ideology and no checks to serve as a bullwork against extremism. ...
www.sptimesphotos.com/blogs/buzz/2006/0 … eview.html – 8k – Cached
I mean you will find the statues of some of the greatest Swiss Reformers in Geneva and yet Geneva, once a bullwork of strong Biblical Protestantism has a …
www.sermonaudio.com/survey_details.asp? … 8240305247 – 113k – Cached
It was founded to protect world peace and as a bullwork against violent agression by individual nations. The UN has indeed failed at its stated goal. ...
aeglos.blogspot.com/2002_10_20_aeglos_archive.html – 132k – Cached
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Bullwork as an eggcorn for bulwark harks back to the roots.
etymonline early 15c., from M.Du. bulwerke or M.H.G. bolwerc, from bole “plank, tree trunk” (from P.Gmc. bul-, from PIE base bhel- (2) “to blow, swell;” see bole) + werc “work.” Figurative sense is from 1570s.
I stumbled on this while looking up the origins of baluarte, the Sp. word for bulwark that turned up in another post this week. There is a wide range of words in many languages that anastomose intricately from bolwerc, most notably boulevard. Attempts to translate it into French led to rumpunctious variations:
etymonline 1769, from Fr. boulevard (15c.), originally “top surface of a military rampart,” from a garbled attempt to adopt M.Du. bolwerc “wall of a fortification” (see bulwark) into French, which lacks a
w. The original notion is of a promenade laid out atop demolished city walls, which would be much wider than urban streets. [...] Early French attempts to digest the Dutch word also include boloart, boulever, boloirque, bollvercq.
Note that rampart itself looks like another ram family eggcorning, of Fr. rempart.
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