Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Heard on the radio this morning: “If I had to wager a guess…”. A blend of “wager” and “hazard a guess”, I’d surmise. There’s something about producing a guess that gets the improvisational tissues confused, titillated, and mixolocutionary. The goal seems to be to express uncertainty about the guess you are making.
Moral education in schools organizer
I was going to wager a guess and say Joe McCarthy, but I like your guess better, ElBandito. :)
Game forum
That’s probably your problem, I’m going to shadow a guess that you’re playing through a router.
Seafood, mama
nyotaimori, the custom of feasting on food served atop a [mostly] naked woman. Googling for images for this entry, I’d reckon a guess that the practice is far more popular overseas than it is in Japan nowadays
Philosophy and religion
I don’t know what came before the Big Bang and I would not hypothesize a guess because it would only be my concept- a human concept.
Film comment
I’d wager a hunch that Mr. Singleton objects to the “Fat Albert” scene more for racial reasons than for the overall quality of your film.
Sports injury clinic
I would say the pain is in the location of the tibialis posterior muscle and so I would hesitate a guess at this being the problem.
See also Ken’s shallow of a doubt.
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Wonderful collection, beyond a shout of a doubt.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Interesting. “Wager a guess” doesn’t really ring any alarms for me, though I can see the semantic awkwardness you’re pointing to if I think about it. If it’s non-standard, I think it’s headed for acceptance, at least in colloquial uses. Books.google.com has hundreds of examples, most of them from recent fiction, but Theodore Dreiser used it in The “Genius” way back in 1915 (in dialogue, of course). I didn’t recognize the names of most of the writers using it these days, but it shows up in the writing of thriller writer Clive Cussler, fantasy writer George R. R. Martin, and also in the work of a scholar writing on St. Augustine.
I guess you could call these “round-trippers” of a sort:
If I had to guess a wager I would say probably Vitamin D was when the audience saw Emma in love with Will, but some will even say it was as early on as The Pilot.
http://www.gleeforum.com/index.php?show … 8&st=65000
It would be the meat and potatoes for Gaming Art Design if I had to guess a wager.
http://forums.stardock.com/381518
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“To” is possibly the missing link for some of these. “I’d venture to guess” is fine, and so is “venture a guess”. “I’d hesitate to guess”, great, but not “I’ll hesitate a guess”. “I’d wager to guess”, OK, conceivable. “If I had to guess a wager” ... twisted, upside down and backward but maybe plausible. You’re right that these skirt the borderline.
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