Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A recent Merriam-Webster Word of the Day flags the semantic pollution of a Hindu loan word (gedkhana) by a more familiar English term (gym), giving us gymkhana.
Wonder why we call these foreign terms brought into English “loan words” and “borrowings?” It’s not as though we were going to give them back.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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My first encounter with the word gymkhana, which was rhymed with Anna, was in reference to horseback slalom courses around oil barrels. I deduced that there was some reference to cans in there.
we did an adults gymcanner when we were in our twenties and it was bloody brilliant!
http://uk.rec.equestrian.narkive.com/Kc … g-you-have
BTW, there must be examples of loanwords that are borrowed back in an unrecognizable form… rosbif maybe, though both roast and beef were not so much borrowed as thrust upon us. Wikipedia suggests anime as a reborrowed word.
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