Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
“Hell-bent” means extremely determined to perform some action or attain some goal. I just came across this on the ‘Net: “When you are hell bound to take on everything…”. Googling “hell-bound for” yields quite a few quotes wherein “hell-bound” is clearly substituted for “hell-bent” (though I’m too busy tonight to count them up). I’m not calling it an eggcorn because it seems that the words “bound” and “bent” don’t sound enough alike; that’s why I didn’t post this in the “Contribute!” section. But what would this sort of thing be called?
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Seems like it might be an idiom blend. Confusing “hell-bound train” with “hell-bent for leather.”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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kem wrote:
Seems like it might be an idiom blend. Confusing “hell-bound train” with “hell-bent for leather.”
Okay, except that “hell-bound” and “hell-bent” are both commonly used in contexts other than “train” or “leather”.
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The two phrases have already blended together in “hell-bound for leather,” which gets a lot of hits (both punning and authentic-looking). So I’d guess that a certain fraction of instances has to come from blending; there may be other pathways, too.
The Word Detective site claims that “hell-bent for leather” is itself probably a blend of two earlier phrases; see the last paragraph of the main post here: http://www.word-detective.com/2009/10/2 … r-leather/
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Bent and bound are in these sorts of contexts pretty close synonyms for each other: if you are bent on doing something you are bound (and determined) to do it.
*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 is reading the hugeificently poplar book BFG by Rolled Doll to my grandson this month. We are enjoying it like fizzcrackers. At one point in the book the giant, who was not able to attend school and is sometimes saying things a bit turvy-tipsy, announces that he and Sophie have to go “pell-mell for leather.”
Oddfully, there is a company in the UK called “Pell-mell” that makes leather goods. I may be left, but I is thinking it is just a codidcidence.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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