Eggcorn Forum

A photograph with an English spelling error has been making the rounds of the web’s funny pictures sites. A woman at some kind of political demonstration holds up a sign that says “No Amnety.” Next to her a child displays a poster that says “Honk for English.” A source that seems to be authoritative says that the picture was first published in an Indiana newspaper in 2006. The humor of the picture apparently lies in the juxtaposition of an English spelling failure with a belief in the supremacy of English.

Could “amnety” for “amnesty” be more than a simple issue of spelling? That is, could semantics have influenced what appears on the poster? The confusion I’m thinking about lies in a cluster of words that has bemired more than one pilgrim slogging the swamps of English. These words are “enmity,” “amnesty,” “animosity,” and “amity.”

These four words arrived in English from three different sources (“Enmity” and “amity” share a history, both tracing back to permutations of amicus, the Latin word for “friend.”). Three of the words are persistent challenges the tongues and memories of English speakers: “amnesty,” because of the English “mn” hangup, often comes out as amesty; “animosity” occasionally shortens to amosity; “enmity” is often pronounced as though it were spelled “emnity” in the United States (This is the pronunciation I learned as a child. See other confessions of this pronunciation error here and here ). Only “amity,” arguably the rarest of the four words, slides easily from tongue to page.

The sign holder’s misspelling is hardly a one-off. The web has thousands of examples of “amnety” and “amnity” in contexts that require “amnesty.” Some of these exchanges are probably a result of tugging by the English “-ity” ending, which is used to indicate “state of,” as in the words “community” and “majority.” Amnesty is a legal state and could attract such a suffix. Once the “-ity” suffix dislodges the correct spelling, further impetus may come from either “amity,” which shares semantic space with “amnesty” (Granting amnesty leads to amity.) or “EM-nuh-tee,” which shares DNA with “amnesty” (A state of enmity is usually a prerequisite for a state of amnesty).