Eggcorn Forum

“Cached.” Hadn’t thought of that one. “Catch(ed) in terms of” also shows up. Almost seems like a Big Fuzzy Spot is coming into (going out of?) focus. The BFS would include “couch,” “cache,” “catch,” “coax” and “crouch.”

The OED details about 20 meanings for the verb “couch,” almost all of them obsolete or technical. The one I’m thinking about is “To lay in concealment (more or less); to hide, conceal; refl. and pass. to lie hidden, to lurk.” The OED marks it as archaic, but I think it may have more currency than “archaic” implies. Besides the reflexive I mentioned (“couched herself”), which I’m fairly certain I’ve heard/read in the wild, there is also the phrase “couched within” that seems to draw on the concealment sense of “couch.” COCA has ten citations for it, all since 1990.

My guess would be that “couch in terms of” either derives from or is influenced by the concealment sense of “couch.”

Last edited by kem (2010-12-18 15:17:39)

l’s and w/u/o sounds have a history of interchanging; especially if the l is a ‘dark’ l like the one in my English. I often counsel Spanish speakers to use an unstressed o instead of an l to sound more natural—e.g. say [ˈɹuo] for rule. I remember one of my professors (Richard Rhodes) referring to a similar phonological process in Hungarian as a “Dewæterawization Ruo”.

In these earlier posts we missed the 800 pound elephant in the room. “Coax” often gets replaced with “coach.” We can see it most clearly in idiomatic phrases such as “be coaxed out of” and “be coaxed into.”

Tribute to a comedian: “Mike had a crazy natural comic timing that couldn’t be coached out of anyone else. It was just the way he was when you turned on the camera. ”

Article in The Spectator: “Like modern-day evacuees, the children would be coached out of cities to come and spend a week working alongside real farmers with animals and on the land.”

Dialog in a published novel : “It seems I’m to fire questions at the blighter along with the rest of you—and be coached into the bargain”

Quaker outreach statement: “Though there have already been some small mistakes in missiology, this young field can be coached into an effective church planting movement.”

Coax, by the way, has a curious history. Spelled both as “cokes” and “coax,” it once referred to a fool. In a poem written by pre-Shakespearian sonneteer Thomas Howell called “A Friendly Admonition to his Friend to Choose a Wife,” Howell observed:

He is a cokes, and worthy strokes, whose wife the Breeches beare.

“Coax” was verbed, quite naturally, as “making a fool of.” To this basic sense accreted the notion of being fond of,/making a pet of (terms of abuse often transform themselves into terms of endearment, as most of you numbnuts know). This second sense appears to have morphed into the idea of persuading people by using this kind of coddling behavior. Coaxing them.

You are right, David, the majority of “coached into” and “coached out of” make perfect sense without invoking “coax.” Many instances of the phrases occur, in fact, in the context of sports reporting and sports metaphors and are best read with only coaching in mind. But the four examples I gave were contexts in which the intrusion of coaching seemed awkward enough to nudge the mind toward other explanations. Perhaps, on refection, the first one, the comedian example, is not as clean as the other three.

More examples. I find “coach X into” of the first three examples awkward. We generally “coach X to,” not “into.” In the fourth example below, a crowd is being “coached.” Usually people are coached as individuals—chances are the crowd is being coaxed. The next three examples have “coaching out of retirement.” Coaching in this case would be a metaphor, at best. It’s easier to think of this as enticing/coaxing out of retirement. In the last example, a cat is being encouraged to come out of a tree. Could literal coaching of an animal work in these circumstances? Chances are that the cat is being coaxed.

Post on cancer recovery: “It almost made me cry, everything I ate tasted like cardboard. My daughter had to coach me into chewing and eating my food, which I had to force down,” she said.”

Blog post: “Last week when showering and shaving, I thought I saw a varicose vein on my calf. I had to stop shaving. I had to get out of the shower and lay down. I had to call Natalie and ask her if I was going to die or if the vein was going to pop out of my leg. She had to coach me into looking at my leg again. I couldn’t find the varicose vein.”

Religious blog: “Ian and I decided to see if we could get some chips from El Rey, one of the Mexican restaurants downtown. Ian literally had to coach me into talking to these people sitting on the patio for about 10 minutes. Once I finally had the nerve to ask, I walked up to them and asked if we could have their leftover chips….which they so kindly handed over to me…all bug eyed.”

Online article: “North Dakota AFL-CIO President Dave Kemnitz coached the crowd into booing (‘I can’t hear you!’) as he read a list of ‘10 reasons why privatizing Social Security is the wrong answer”

School newspaper blog: “[He] has helped bring the I.S 228 team to victory since being coached out of retirement by the school’s principal, Dominick D’Angelo.”

Letter to the editor: “Yes, Bill Burton will be missed. I hope he can be coached out of retirement on occasion and share his experiences with us in the future.”

Harry Potter review: “Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn, a teacher coached out of retirement ”

Forum post: “Last night we went for a walk, and saw a cat stuck in a tree! My husband was able to coach the cat down, but it took a while!”

Last edited by kem (2014-01-09 17:25:51)