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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
To inveigh, meaning to denounce, seems to have restricted itself in this century to the idiom “inveigh against.†The term has been on a steady decline for three centuries. Its rarity gives it an effete feel.
A handful of web sites replace the past tense, “inveighed against,†with the present tense of “invade.†Inveighing is a sort of invasion, with words as weapons.
Transcribed comment from rezoning hearing: “She read a quote from the book, “he invade against greed head developers and cold hearted schemers who flock to Florida to pave over another Cypress swamp for a shopping
mall or instant subdivision.â€â€
Essay about house restoration: “Ruskin also had invade against “desecration†and argued that old buildings should be valued in themselves, but “not†improved. â€
Sermon: “Shortly after Luther died, the German nation was involved in war, and aside from the wickedness of the sins which Luther had invade against so.â€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Interesting. They managed to convince themselves that invade was in the past tense (the preterite, you say?), like made. Odd that there are no hits for “invaded against”.
But let some historical figures weigh in here with another simbling. Luther inweighed against devotional prayers as feeble food for the soul. And before him, following the great slave revolts in Sicily, Appian inweighed against the multitude of slaves as useless in war and never faithful to their masters. Finally, closer to home, a Norwegian poet of the anti-religious left, Arnulf Overland, in his poem “Du ma ikke sove” (“You must not sleep”) in 1936 inweighed against the Nazis with the following memorable lines:
“Do not tolerate with such equanimity
the injustice that befalls somebody else.”
Only four weighty hits for that form, and six more for the simple present.
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“Inweighed against” for “inveighed against” may be influenced by “weigh in on,” a century-old metaphorical twist on “weigh.” As in “weigh in on an argument.”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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