Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
At a minimum, the hundreds of people who replace “mitigate” with “midigate” have a spelling problem.
Three examples:
Comment on renewable energy site: “Unfortunately PV and other renewables are trying to midigate the problem, but will likely be seen as the “cause” like billp37’s comment.”
Car forum post: “I really do agree with your position, but since they aren’t changing then I will have to do what I can to midigate the risk”
Report of an airline flight: “Sorry about the delay folks, I will try to midigate the problem as soon as possible by flying this plane like I stole it.”
But could it be more than a spelling problem? To mitigate is to alleviate, to temper, to moderate. To pull the extremes, in short, to the mid-dle.
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I think there’s a good chance that some of these are influenced by middleman. The existence of lots of “lidigation” out there bends the compass toward misspelling, however, like “Esbestos Lidigation Coalition”. No hits for “middle gate between” or any nearby spellings that I could find.
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Yeah, I looked for middlegate too and couldn’t find it. This one will be a head-scratcher, lest someone fesses up.
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