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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I didn’t have the time to read all the pages of contributions to see if this was already submitted. Sorry in advance if it’s a repeat.
I was looking at an Instructable today for making an inner tube purse, and saw this:
“Fold the sides to the center and pin or use close pins.” Well, the spring-loaded ones certainly close and stay closed, don’t they? I wonder what the author calls non-mechanical clothes pins.
I also understand that “clothes pins” is written both as one word and as two words.
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Welcome to the forum, Lint!
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I think you’ve hooked a live one, and didn’t find it elsewhere on the site. (I use, and recommend, the second search, the one marked “Google Searchâ€, on the Eggcorn Database main page .) There are lots of hits, including repeated ones, out on the ’net, enough to make it unlikely that this is just accidental or just misspelling close while meaning ‘clothes’.
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Even the non-spring-loaded ones can be used to close things (this was one of many images for the phrase “close pinsâ€).
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Interestingly, it is not only what I know as “clothes pins†which are counted: see here
and here , for instance.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-11-18 11:28:12)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I agree with David – eligible for Kem’s SNOT award too I should think, although I prefer to think of them as moustache-eggcorns.
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This is a great, credible find. It will surely land in my top 10 of the year (along with the other two dozen really outstanding finds we’ve had this year).
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Brilliant. And not only found in conjunction with ‘pins’
“Wash your cardigan, take them out of the washing machine while there still wet. Get two close pegs and stretch the jumper as far as possible then clip the ends to the radiator and leave to dry.
and numerous examples of ‘close drier’, eg
my power bill went up from having to use the close drier (family of 6=3 loads a day=everyone has daily laundry duties even Dads and 6yr olds)
which also makes wonderful sense.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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Explain the wonderful sense to me? Because the door on it closes? It seems to me more likely to just be the misspelling, and that people are thinking CLOTHES while spelling close .
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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In many instances, one can’t be sure whether “close” is simply a misspelling of “clothes.” So, I suppose the burden of eggcorn proof lies in finding examples with enough context. The task is at least simplified by the fact that clothes pins close … since not all pins do.
Also, many people still have clothes pins lying around even if the custom of hanging clothes on the line has vanished for them. When their young offspring encounter such a pin it is more apparent that the item closes than comes in contact with clothes.
I would also suggest that many grade-schoolers have probably used a clothes pin in an art project without seeing it in any other setting. One day I just might ask one of them why it is called a clothes pin.
Last edited by jorkel (2010-11-20 22:13:24)
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Yeah, well. Perhaps not all that wonderful. There are google hits for ‘dry my close’ after all. My idea was that ‘close drying’ was the opposite of drying in the ‘open’.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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JuanTwoThree wrote:
Yeah, well. Perhaps not all that wonderful. There are google hits for ‘dry my close’ after all. My idea was that ‘close drying’ was the opposite of drying in the ‘open’.
Yeah, that’s reasonable. Didn’t occur to me. Be nice to find a perp who would confess to meaning it that way.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I can see ‘close drier’ with my eyes clothed.
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