Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
To some, at least, an appendix to a written work is not quite the same as an addendum. The Australian Online Grammar web site distinguishes them in this way:
An appendix supplements the body of a document, providing detailed information that not everyone will want to read. Appendices are often statistical, historical or technical.
An addendum is extra information that the writer discovered after writing the report, such as a new study on the topic. It’s a bit like a PS.
For other, however, there is a large overlap in meaning between the two terms. This overlap may be why the blend “appendum†has established itself in scholarly English in recent decades. As far as I can tell, “appendum†hasn’t made it into a credible dictionary yet.
Some examples:
Danish consumer site: “The appendum contains guidance as to how broadband speed connections should be marketed to comply with the law.â€
Web virus forum: “ looked in the appendum and it said they could be accessed via the OTHERS effects menu,â€
Software support page: “Download the Appendum to the Using Microfin 3 manual, “What’s new in Microfin 3.5?”â€
“Appendum†is a blend, to be sure, but it is arguably an eggcorn – someone tries to write/say “addendum†and “append†slips in, gives a little Mae West hip flip, and the next thing the speaker knows he is waking up in a brothel with “appendum†beside him in the bed and the lexicography squad banging on the door.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Also (reported both spoken and written):
I guess we’ll do an ammendum [to the divorce papers]
I’ve been hearing chatter about a possible ammendum to the original NOA stemming from the investigations the NCAA have been conducting
Survey of customer and staff attitudes,’ report No 3, ammendum no 2 of a study carried out into the organisation and allocation of duties at crown post offices.
And even
RFP0000024 Addendix A -Appendix E. Supplemental Documents. The following supplemental documents are available on the Web.
Executive Summary. Report. Addendix A. Appendix B. Appendix C. Appendix D. Appendix E. Appendix F. Top of Page, Copyright, ...
(This file is exclusive of addendices.) Appendix A – Summary of
By your analysis, Kem, —which I do not disagree with at all— virtually any semantically-based blend (and most, at least of the ones I notice, are) is “arguably an eggcornâ€.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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virtually any semantically-based blend (and most, at least of the ones I notice, are) is “arguably an eggcornâ€.
We’ve run into this problem before. The issue turns on what is in the mind of the perpetrator, doesn’t it? And minds and motives, as we all know, are difficult to descry and descrybe (Pause for a moment to think how modern legal systems contort their torts around the topic of motives.)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I should have limited that to inadvertent, non-purposeful semantics-based blends. And probably even further to inadvertent, non-purposeful semantics-based blends that are standard for the speaker. But I think it would be hard to find any of that class that were not eggcornish.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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