Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I heard a television news reporter today describe police who searched an apartment as “ram shacking” the place. My Google search produced more than a hundred instances of “ram shack” and “ram sack” for this usage. I love the image of a large-horned ovine butting its way through a Sutton Place apartment.
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Hi Old Word Wolf. It certainly is a good find. This particular eggcorn was discussed here in the forum a few months back…
ramsack for ransack by booboo Contribute! 7 2007-06-05 21:49:17 by patschwieterman
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I came across “ram sacking” today and had to make sure it was here. It Googles pretty well: http://is.gd/gAyHL
Last edited by GrantBarrett (2010-11-01 17:58:27)
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The earlier posts (2007 thread is here) make a good case for a connection between ransack and ramshackle, and thence maybe to ram sack as great eggcorn blend. Nilep points out that these words have been associated for hundreds of years.
A lot of folks just don’t get ransack. Randsacked googles well too. It might be introducing an element of randomness into the destruction. Also very popular is ranksacked. This one might be an infectious k. While we’re at it, rainsacking is frequent, though no connection is made to the weather. Other variants out there at homeopathic dosages: rangsacked, rampsacked, rapsacked, ranshacked and rumsacked.
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