Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
What more can I say?
If (big if!) Alito is “eminently qualified” for the court, then he stands out among his peers, is conspicuously qualified for the position.
If he’s “immanently qualified”, his skill is, what? Innate?
Kelly B.
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Or even better and should have thought of it, “imminently qualified”. According to a PBS Newshour transcript of a George W. Bush press conference, the president said “I’m mindful of the fact that someone as imminently qualified as John Roberts did have half the Democrat caucus voted against him.”
He presumably didn’t mean that Roberts was moments away from being qualified, and apparently the White House later corrected the transcript.
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In fairness to George Bush (and I never thought I’d write those words) “imminently” and “eminently,” like “pin” and “pen”, are homonyms in his dialect. Hence no eggcorn. As a lawyer, I read stenographic transcripts all the time. I can tell you that it is unfair to charge anything you read in a transcript to the original speaker.
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