Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Here’s the odious Joe Klein from this week’s edition of his column in Time magazine:
“There aren’t so many high-paying manufacturing jobs anymore; the relative security of government work doesn’t need to be augmented by ridiculously obstruse procedures for firing incompetents or by 20-year pension packages.”‘Obstruse’ looks like a real word, but it’s only a portmanteau of’abstruse’ and ‘obscure’ – two words that happen to live in the same conceptual neighborhood. (And there’s an old post observing that the real word ‘obtuse’ sometimes gets used the same way: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=144).
More examples:
Engineering was one thing, but the arcane and obstruse language of international accounting was something else again.
www.zoominfo.com/people/Swirski_George_268117.aspx
This offering from Homi Bhaba is definitely in the running to win the grand prize for the most obstruse, deliberately arcane piece of academic prose ...
www.amazon.com/review/RYK885MA5SGSF
She’ll help you if you ask, but even when she helps the explanation seems obstruse.
www.ratemyteachers.com/neera-young/1309699-t
Sometimes we’re seeing from the first person eyes of the spunky youngest girl; sometimes the poetic obstruse and otherworldly handicapped twin; ...
www.amazon.com/review/R2ULRJ3IIGL2N5
...especially as I was a not lawyer and so not able to advance more obstruse and complex technical legal arguments about these matters …
www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/007831.html
The obstruse terminology comes from Logic Programming, upon which GML is modeled.
www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/gml.htm
Last edited by klakritz (2010-07-07 19:26:15)
Offline
“the most obstruse, deliberately arcane piece of academic prose” makes me wonder whether there’s not a third word in the mix, obstruct.
Offline
Obstruct has two rather striking obstruent clusters.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
“Abstruse,” “obscure,” “obtuse,” “obstruct.” We might also add “abstract” to the list. These are two-syllable members of a big fuzzy spot. Anything is likely to take root in this fertile soil.
Besides Ken’s “obstruse,” there are also numerous examples on the web of “obscuse.” Example:
Newsgroup post on computers: “I’ve never seen the point in not using it, am I missing something for obscuse cases involving legacy hardware?â€
There are also examples of “abstruct” and “abscure.”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline