Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
On this bulletin board:
The mutation from the contracted form “should(or could, or would)’ve†is understandable, but grates on me to no end.
Plenty of others:
He’s rugged, contrary, and protective in an old-fashioned way that aggravates and charms Liza to no end.
BottomlessComments.com – the site with comments to no end.
TV on DVD delights me to no end.
Sadly, and this annoys me to no end, 94% of the Disney sequels are just rotten. But that won’t stop the studio from re-releasing the things.
I am a very punctual person and it annoys me to no end that others seem to think that appointments and starting times are just suggestions
The odd construction Verbed no end means “verbed to the highest degreeâ€. The construction “verbed to no end†still means, for at least some of us, “verbed for no discernible purpose.†(The BottomlessComments site may actually be playing off that notion, and the first quote above might possibly mean “grates on me without achieving anything of value.†But I doubt it.) In any case, it pretty clearly does not mean that any longer for a lot of other people.
This is of course likely to be a kind of blend: verbed to {the max, the highest/Nth degree, the extreme, the end, infinity} all mean about the same as “verbed no endâ€, so the encroachment of “to†is understandable. And the resulting imagery makes sense: “no end†can be seen as another way to say “infinityâ€.
Is it enough of a meaning/imagery change to count as an eggcorn? I’ll leave that up to you. It’s marginal on that score.
As far as I’m concerned, whether or not it’s an eggcorn, it’s an entertaining error, and it’s pretty clearly standard for some. I think it might easily become standard for all of us if it didn’t already have the other meaning for many of us.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-11-24 21:43:45)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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This is reminiscent of another one we’ve discussed recently: jump to the gun << jump the gun . Jump the gun like Verbed no end is abnormally short and abrupt, and this is remedied in both cases by making a more normal prepositional phrase with to .
I’m also reminded of the old joke
What did the firefly say after he backed into the fan? —Delighted no end.
Jokes like that actually have a lot in common with eggcorns: they deliberately awake you to awareness of alternate imagery that can be gotten from a standard phrase.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-11-25 10:20:39)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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This caught me off-guard because I’ve heard “to no end” in the sense of “endlessly” all my life, and I’ve never thought of it as anything other than a very informal but perfectly acceptable idiom.
David Tuggy’s claim that it’s an “error” surprised me. First of all, I’m one of the entertainingly erroneous for whom it’s standard—at least in speech. Second, I think DT has oversimplified the sitatuation: “to no end” feels natural in some settings where the bare form “no end” feels odd. I predicted to myself that if I went out and looked for words ending in -ing, I would find “to no end” predominating where most people would consider the word an adjective, and “no end” predominating where the word was part of a present progressive construction. I think I was only sort of right. Numbers below are raw hits; I didn’t bother scanning individual citations to weed out false positives.
Adjectival forms
frustrating no end 77
frustrating to no end 3390
annoying no end 7
annoying to no end 1300
charming no end 6
charming to no end 9
Verbal forms
talking no end 603
talking to no end 41
typing no end 134
typing to no end 2
lying no end (1?)
lying to no end 47
cheating no end 0
cheating to no end 5
As you can see, the prediction of this native “to no end” user seemed to hold up in most cases. But “lying” and “cheating” were both problematic for my original theory. So my revised theory is that “to no end” may have negative connotations that the bare form doesn’t. In fact, it’s looking like “to no end” is not only standard but far more common when something decidedly negative is being referred to.
Was my original adjectival/verbal split merely illusory because most of the adjectival forms were negative anyhow? Could be—I don’t have time at the moment to do more googling. (“Charming” is interesting, but too small to indicate much.) It’d also be useful to look at books.google.com to see if edited prose shows a different breakdown.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-11-25 01:06:17)
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Okay, I was lying to no end when I said I would google no more forever. Let’s show some hot verb action:
frustrates me no end 1160
frustrates me to no end 36,600
annoys me no end 24,700
annoys me to no end 43,000
Both of these seem to support my comments above, but isn’t it strange that the percentages are so different between “frustrate” and “annoy”? This may turn out to be one of those cases where the Google numbers will have shifted dramatically by tomorrow morning….
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Well, so much for my negative theory. Here are two unambiguously positive uses:
delights me no end 1590
delights me to no end 3840
charms me no end 183
charms me to no end 507
So my new new theory is that unless you’re talking about typing or talking, “to no end” is the standard form and “no end” is a strange perversion employed only by a pathetic, benighted minority. I may be revising that soon….
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Re: all these various googlings, in most cases, the “”no end”/”to no end” proportions don’t tell us much, if anything, about the real proportions of these phrases when used in the sense of “endlessly”, as just looking at the numbers of hits doesn’t give us a clue as to how much of the time “to no end” means “to no purpose” rather than “endlessly”. Even studying the context of a sample of these to make that distinction would be of limited value, because often even that would not allow us to discern which meaning was intended.
Endlessly, but hopefully not to no end;
Dixend
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OK, maybe this is a successful enough one to not count as an eggcorn at all. Interestingly, this is one case where the successful usage doesn’t feel like a folk etymology. (I think I remember reading and/or contributing to discussion which suggested that eggcorns are nonce folk-etymologies, hence successful ones should be full-scale folk-etymologies.)
For me (and I didn’t include this in characterizing the construction last night), the notion of the experiencer is very important. Sometimes the experiencer isn’t overtly mentioned in the clause —e.g. one can say “delighted no end†meaning “I am delighted no endâ€, but usually the experiencer must be there overtly. Thus I could not easily say several of the phrases you googled, Pat, such as “frustrating no endâ€, “annoying no endâ€, or “charming no endâ€. I could pretty easily say “frustrating her no end†or “annoying them no endâ€. Somehow the preterites work better, though: “it frustrated her no endâ€, “it annoyed them no end†are perfectly fine. “Talking no end†… well, maybe I could say that one. I think I would still have to have an experiencer in mind: I couldn’t say it of a person chattering away out in the forest by himself. He could be talking endlessly, and would almost certainly be talking to no end, but not talking no end.
I love it how the more you look at these things the more complex the situation turns out to be. How does the phrase go? “There is no subject so abstruse and complex but that careful and diligent study will show it to be even more abstruse and complex than was at first thought.â€
In any case, for any of these that you list, if I were to say “verbing to no end†I would have to mean “pointlessly verbingâ€, not “endlessly verbing†or “verbing to the highest degreeâ€.
I accept that I am in the (benighted, pathetic) minority on this issue. But I’m happy here!
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-11-25 10:22:59)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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David—Your experiencer/no experiencer split is pretty much the same as my verbal/adjectival split, isn’t it? I do think there’s something to that. Whether the sentence has an identifiable agent with presumably identifiable motives/purposes does seem to make a difference in the numbers in some cases.
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No, I wouldn’t say so. In something like “I was frustrated no endâ€, frustrated is an adjective (a participle or deverbal adjective, of course, doing its part to form something close to but not quite identical to a passive construction) and the subject I is the experiencer. In “it frustrated me no endâ€, frustrated is a preterite verb, and its object is the experiencer. In something like “he was/kept talking no end†(which is marginal for me but not impossible) there is no overt experiencer. I was trying to say that I think that even in the latter case, it works better if an experiencer is construed/understood. I can see using the phrase to describe someone’s behavior at a party, with the implication that people were frustrated/bored/embarrassed or otherwise affected by the endless talking.
btw, for me, in “frustrate(d)/delight(ed)/charm(ed)/etc. no endâ€, “no end†means “to the nth degreeâ€, not “endlessly†in the sense of “for a long timeâ€, whereas “talking no end†would mean “talking for a long (seemingly endless) time.†Does that fit how you would understand them?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Non-deverbal adjectives can show up in this construction, too, though they are marginal for me, and, if the ghits are any indication, for others too. “Happy no end†can occur; “weary no end†yields a couple of potential hits; “afraid no end†just sounds weird (“frightened no end†is much better.) Likely the verbal form “frightens/delights/charms/confuses/etc. me no end†was historically first, and it with the deverbals transparently derived from it still form the center of the category.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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ESPN Classic disgusts me to no ends!!!!
It urps me to no ends when people start telling me that women my age shouldn’t have hair past their bra. It also urps me to no ends when when people act like I should color my hair.
When attempting to woo a woman, every man must remember that the slightest comment can make a big difference – it could either flatter her to no ends, or offend her in ways that you didn’t think was possible.
I spoilt her to no ends, played with her all the time, gave her just about everything she wanted
A perfect summer blockbuster that frustrated me to no ends because after nearly 1000 pages I was loathe to see end, and am now yearning for a sequel.
There seem to be oodles of these.
Some have the “pointlessly/in vain†meaning rather than the “to the max†meaning:
Shame we would love a top location shop to showcase, but alas to no ends :( Loads of places I would go to is 1 Flat White Soho
This one seems to mean something like “to the ends of the earth†or “boundlessly†or something of that sort.
This is one more clear example of how this councill will go to no ends to reach into the pockets of its constituents. ...
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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To my princess, whom i love and adore unendlessly
(one example of many)
I suppose it doubles up ‘unendingly’ and ‘endlessly’.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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