Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Has anyone ever seen “bought the dust”? I first saw it here, in the commentary at the bottom. It’s a bit of a pain to google, because it picks up phrases like “bought the dust hood.” An example:
“My Phal came from the orchid killing grounds known as Walmart. I bought two there and sure enough one bought the dust…”—indiboi.com
Using Lexis/Nexis, I eventually found a mainstream source:
“Thematically, the ten entries in What Passes for Love take issue with adultery, betrayal, passion, obsession, self – abnegation in relation to other – definition, compromise/accommodation, forgiveness, and the painful paradoxes of pleasure, while blending lyrical substance and a crisp, uncluttered, and often colloquial style with a gritty “been-there, done-it, bought-the-dust” approach that belies the author’s disarming propriety concerning what does, in fact, pass for love.”—Canadian Business and Current Affairs, November 1996
Also the below, obviously tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps reflecting the author hearing the eggcorn in the past:
“I should explain how this wife got stretched so thin that she actually went to the extreme of advertising for an actual kitten. Three years ago, her kitten bit the farm. It bought the dust. It went to a fur, fur better place.”—Lewiston Morning Tribune, July 26, 1995.
“Bought” is hard to mistake for “bit,” but maybe it reflects a mix-up with “bought the farm,” as implied above, or (the more modern version?) “bought it.”
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The present tense version shows up, which may help explain the past tense one in a possibly more eggcornish way. ( Buy is much closer phonologically to bite than bought is to bit .)
Most of these seem to arise from mondegrenous hearing of a line in a song (by a rock group called Queen, apparently: I only remember my kids singing a Wierd Al Yankovich parody of it.) Apparently it is used by the announcers in certain sporting events.
What does is mean when they say ’ Another one buys the dust?? ¶ Update : Ops i think its ( Another one bites the dust ) ok can u explain why they say it ¶ https://answers.yahoo.com/question/inde … 029AAshqJV
Another one buys the dust http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhot … Hesse.html
oh boy another one buys the dust
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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The problem is if I don’t bite the farm, but have an accident, and become seriously disabled
I guess you never know when you will/can bite the farm.
There’s the mixed metaphor: “buy the farm/bite the dust”, which may mix the dust-bowl in with *cowboys’ “bite the dust” and wartime slang “buy the farm” (WW2 if Wiki is to be believed) but it’s also a mishearing followed by a reshaping and thus eggcornish.
Grant that my sword may pierce the shirt of Hector about his heart, and that full many of his comrades may bite the dust as they fall dying round him.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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