Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I was reading a news item in one of our online newspapers today and saw the following
Mr Fryer said police had reopened the case because they didn’t do the inquiry correctly the first time.
“It was all very slap-hazard,” he said. “They are investigating again because they should have done it properly to start with.”
Full story at http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3789697a11,00.html
I’ve never heard slap-hazard before but wonder if it is a combination of slap-happy and haphazard. One meaning of slap-happy is ‘showing lack of care for consequences’.
I’ve done a quick Google on “slap hazard or slap-hazard’ and got 2610 results. There were only 140 for slaphazard and over 4 million for haphazard.
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More likely it is (subconsciously) from “slapdash” and “haphazard.” Looks like an eggcorn to me.
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