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Chris -- 2018-04-11
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“despeakable/dispeakable/disspeakable†for “despicableâ€
“Despicable†comes from a Latin root meaning “to look down upon†– the “de+†is a prefix meaning “down,†as in “descend,†“depress,†etc. But many users of these reshapings clearly interpret the “des+†in the acorn as a negative prefix – the “disspeakable†variant makes this fairly clear. The logic seems to be that right-thinking people should speak of despicable actions in a negative way. Blending is probably at work here, too: “despicable†and “unspeakable†are virtually synonyms in certain contexts, and the roundtripper “unspicable†does in fact get 81 ughits, though it seems harder to justify in eggcorn terms. For reasons I don’t understand, the “despeakable†variant in particular seems to be something of a regionalism – while one of my examples of that form (the last) is by a Californian who is probably a native speaker, a surprisingly large number of examples come from Africa. (Ughits: despeakable, 254; disspeakable, 382; dispeakable, 393). Examples:
The police should be given the best training to not only deal with the aftermath of crime, but to investigate, gather information, stake out suspected criminals and also be able to identify these characters way before they do these disspeakable acts.
http://bermudasun.bm/main.asp?SectionID … leID=43929
Germans committed the most brutal disspeakable crimes in the history of humanity, murdered millions and now they say its offensive to them?
http://www.mbworld.org/forums/off-topic … eview.html
Though, no matter how disspeakable their actions are, they are your mirror-imadges.
http://www.chowk.com/interacts/u/32358/1/0/48
I don’t know about you, but I find this very dishonest and disspeakable.
This is symptomatic of a problem that is predominantly in Kenya, the urge to make a quick buck.
http://sinatabu.blogspot.com/2009/04/wh … ss-my.html
Therefore, I condemn in its totality the despeakable actions of these criminals. I also commend the recent effort by the Government of Nigeria to combat these vices through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC).
http://discussions.ghanaweb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52274
For many in the developed countries its is despeakable, for Ugandans, its the reality of our lives.
http://observers.france24.com/en/conten … ott-lively
Levy’s impotence is though not suprising, look at his reaction to Shakafuswa’s most despeakable behaviour?
http://www.lusakatimes.com/?p=2534
Britain invaded “colonised” and did away with God given resources in the most despeakable ways..
http://www.nigerianmuse.com/article_comments/?faid=233
I find it despeakable that banksters were bailed out in a hurry, without even asking for it much.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/w … ort=newest
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Prima. That goes on my “best ten (so far) of 2010” list.
One suspects that the ultracommon “dispicable” is an attempt, at the cost of a bad word division, to replace the less transparent “de-” with the more emphatically negative “dis-.” Perhaps the “dispickable” misspelling (thousands of ghits, hundreds of ughits) imports some of the semantics of both “dis-” and “pick” (i.e., something that is despicable is something no one should pick).
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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