Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Just found this site, I’ve been collecting these for a while and didn’t know hey had a name.
But I’m surprised, I did a search here and didn’t find this ubiquitous eggcorn.
Am I missing it somehow?
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Welcome to the forum, Andy.
“Thin edge of the wedge” is not on our site.
In what sense do you think this might be an eggcorn?
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Thank you kem.
I’ve always thought it should be “thin end”. To say “thin edge” is meaningless, since you can’t have a thick one. “End” is surely the original, correct word, but the rhyme is apparently too hard to resist!
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I’m not sure I would agree that “edge” always implies thinness. Take the common phrase “leading edge,” which probably originates as a nautical metaphor (propeller blades, rudders) but which most people map today as an aeronautical metaphor. The leading edge of a lifting body, such as a wing, is usually thicker than the trailing edge. The thickest part of the pitching wedges used by golfers is likewise the leading edge. “Thin edge,” then, is not necessarily redundant and “thick edge” is not a contradiction. Note that certain splitting wedges are thicker in the middle and could conceivably said to have both a thick edge and a thin edge.
As for actual usage, COCA, the American corpus available on the web, documents the two expressions occurring at almost equal rates. The BNC, on the other hand, suggests that Brits, while they use both phrases, are much more comfortable with “thin end” than “thin edge.” Google Books shows both phrases current in the nineteenth century.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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The ‘thin edge’ is the part of a cricket bat that you don’t usually want to hit the ball with.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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