Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
I see that wander/wonder is in the Database
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/200/wonder/
but it’s hard to see the semantics of some of the examples.This strikes me as more convincing
What to do with my wondering eye husband?
because if/when you look at an attractive person who is not your partner ” wonder” is pretty much what you do! My wife calls it “following” when my head does a half turn Exorcist style. She does it too, for the record.
It’s difficult to see how to prove that anybody thinks that this is the meaning of “wondering eye” and that it’s not poor spelling. I don’t trust Google enough to state with any certainty that there is a far higher ratio of “wondering eyes” to “wandering eyes” than there is of the less semantically obliging “wondering hands” to “wandering hands”.Offline
“When what to my wondering eyes should appear / but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer”. It would be hard to sort out such cases where “wondering eyes” was really what all of us would mean. I think it’s a live one, but it will be very hard to count relative numbers.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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