Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
(Since this is the section for things that aren’t eggcorns … it just caught my eye:)
Dan Hannan blogs: “Europe’s banks are staring at a Lehman moment. This is the tempest long foretold, slow to make head but sure to hold.”
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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What do you make of “slow to make head”? A blend of headway and the storm clouds coming to a (thunder)head? And “sure to hold”? I think I’m having a senior’s moment because this poetic sentence seems to hold meaning that I can’t extract.
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I remember pondering the same lines when David T first posted this. “Make head” is a phrase I’ve only seen in 19th C stuff outside of this Kipling poem, and I think it means “to advance, make progress,” though I couldn’t quickly confirm that. I think “hold” here means to be maintained, and both of those interpretations fit with the larger context of the poem—which refers to a tempest that’s been long a-brewing and won’t dissipate quickly.
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