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Chris -- 2018-04-11
“Indefatigable,†a cousin of “fatigue,†entered English during the era of Latin assimilation in the late Renaissance. At the time the it was coined “indefatigable†meant, as it still means now, “unwearied, unable to be made tired.â€
Some of its cognates have been left by the road to die–“indefatigation,†“indefatigableness,†“indefatigabilityâ€â€“but “indefatigable†keeps soldiering on, indefatigably. I’m surprised that English has retained the word these many centuries.1 It is an excessively long term with good one-word replacements. The only explanation I can think of is that some speakers find the word fun to say. I’m not one of them. It makes my tongue trip over my lips.
Interestingly, “indefatigable†is one of those words that can be disenvoweled with little loss of blood. It’s easy to recognize when turned into a string of consonants: ndftgbl
Long, hard, infrequently-used words are (with apologies to Frank Zappa) the mothers of invention. In the case of “indefatigable†we find the clever replacement “indefeatigable.â€
The web has about ten examples of “indefeatigable.†Three of them:
Sport blog: “Cal dipped into its magic bag of indefeatigable running backs after Marshawn Lynch left with an injury….â€
Online political journal article: “He has been an indefeatigable campaigner on behalf of the wretched of the earthâ€
Article in a festschrift by a computer science prof: “In Melbourne, Australia, at a meeting organized by the indefeatigable David Dowe…we met again.â€
I propose a new award category at the end of the year:X-tra Large: Eggcorn with the Most Syllables. This six-syllable mosh is my entry in the category. We can all chip in and send the winner on a one-week holiday to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Anglesey, Wales. The second place winner gets a two-week holiday there.
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Last edited by kem (2010-12-14 15:04:24)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Crystal observes: “One of the great mysteries of language change is why people decide to use one word and not another.†Amen.
Add to that a quote attributed to Noam Chomsky:
As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
Of course it comes down to definitions (What constitutes “science� Must it achieve 100% accurate predictions to merit the name?), but if Chomsky’s dictum is accepted, why should we ever have expected that there might be a science of language (aka linguistics)? Because language is shot through with choices of this sort, and their various aftermaths.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Ooooh, a real winner, in the open category too, not just for sesquipedaliastics. “Indeflectible” exists as an eggcorn for “indefectible”, but that’s a mere 5 syllables. I shall keep my eyes wide.
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I’m surprised that English has retained the word these many centuries. It is an excessively long term with good one-word replacements. The only explanation I can think of is that some speakers find the word fun to say.
One reason that indefatigable has persisted, in BrEnglish at least, may be that since the first HMS Indefatigable in 1784 the Royal Navy has replaced it seven times, the last one being scrapped in 1956. “Inde” is usual abbreviation used by those who need to refer to it. I think Kem’s been reading my CV for, many years ago, I worked for a short time at TS Indefatigable, sometimes known as “the school that thinks it’s a ship,” which was based at – a little spooky, this – Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (etc) known to locals as Llanfair PG.
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Perhaps not that spooky – I’ve been reading the David Crystal’s book I mentioned above and in the book he talks about the Welsh1 town with the long name. He describes a walk through the town and tells about seeing the old school. Perhaps that was what triggered the thought of “indeafeatigable.”
Crystal says that the students had the name of the school inscribed on the front of their caps, and that with the closure of the school in 1995 “an era of risqué jokes” ended. Perhaps I’m just dense this morning, but I don’t know what he is alluding to.
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1 My fingers typed Welch. Does my mind think there is some connection between the British country and a brand of grape juice?
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Ah, nothing physic at all then. As for the ‘risqué jokes’ I imagine he’s alluding to ‘rum, bum and concertina’ as a pose to ‘wine, women and song’ but I shall endeavour to locate the book to find out more. I like ‘disenvoweled’ by the way, but by your leave will use the ‘disemvowelled’ variant.
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cntrvrsl rmrks blg
it doesn’t even mention the controversial remarks or anything related to them; perhaps that is because the “controversial remarks” were immediately disavoweled upon being challenged
Last edited by David Bird (2010-07-08 17:44:12)
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David B—
Are you suggesting that the hundreds who spell “disavowal” as “disavowel” are seeing/hearing “vowel” in the word?
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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by your leave will use the ‘disemvowelled’ variant
You are right, it should be “disemvoweled.” My thick colonial lips, however, are incapable of two feats: one is singing the lyrics of The Major-General’s Song from the Pirates of Penzance; the second is pronouncing correctly any word with an “mv” digram. I look for ways to circumbent such words.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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kem wrote:
David B—
Are you suggesting that the hundreds who spell “disavowal” as “disavowel” are seeing/hearing “vowel” in the word?
It seems pretty likely that the spelling of disavowel is based on vowel. It’s also quite likely that most disavowellers don’t recognize vow or avow in the bowels of the word. Beyond that, I throw in the towel. Removing vowels just doesn’t make much sense in this context. Curiously common though, isn’t it.
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Guess I’ll need to disavowel all of my education
Last edited by David Bird (2010-07-08 19:26:18)
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A famous early Language Log post pointed out the confusion between vows and vowels for some speakers: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language … 00238.html
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Too good to be new. We also have an entry here by CatherineR. It occurred to me on the long walk home today that disavowel is not logical if you think of it as excision of vowels, but avowel is a reasonable verb where the speaker is aware of the presence of “vowel”. It would mean “put into words, give voice to, pronounce”, in other words, avow.
Last edited by David Bird (2010-07-09 10:23:47)
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patschwieterman wrote:
A famous early Language Log post pointed out the confusion between vows and vowels for some speakers: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language … 00238.html
Interestingly enough, if you search google for ‘wedding vowels’ now, it is silently corrected and returns results for ‘wedding vows’ in addition to results for ‘wedding vowels’. It seems that this is a common enough confusion that Google now has “vowels” as a built in synonym for “vows” (as with “photos”/”pictures”, etc). See: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/ … guage.html
Last edited by tyler (2010-07-09 10:16:01)
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