Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
We noted earlier that champing at the bit is being rapidly replaced. Pat has provided a survey of earlier variants: chopping, jumping, chomping, chaffing and chafing at the bit. The same thread contains chomping at the bait and the beat, and champion at the bit.
Meanwhile, a lot of people think that if you are really eager to get going, you will be chomping it to bits. It is undefined. Your chew-toy? Your leash?
Why the Chinese are winning
They are currently on a national holiday which last about 2 weeks. They are chomping it to bits to get back to work so they can get samples to me for approval and into production so they can get paid.
Football
I mean his WHOLE life has been DEFINED by football. Who is he without it? When he was suspended the first time, he was chomping it to bits and training like an SOB on his own.
Wrestling
Ted was chomping it to bits to get his hands on Cody
Hope for ADD
The world could be my oyster at 54 and I’m chomping it to bits waiting for treatment from my psyc.
Trainspotting
The DME EMD SD40-2 6088 is chomping it to bits to get on the move into Chicago.
Babynews
Congrats she is beautiful and I bet your hubby is chomping it to bits to get home
And for Pat:
Football news
On the other side of the ball, the Sooners defense was chopping it to bits to get their hands on Hart.
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Lovely. File “chomping it to bits” and “chomping at the bits” under the long list of confusions caused by the loss of an agricultural context.
Have to wonder how often “bit” in idioms becomes a stealth eggcorn for modern speakers. When we say “blow to bits,” “do one’s bit,” “a little bit,” “a naughty bit,” “a bit part,” do we subtly conflate the traditional sense of “a bit” (related to “bite”) with the nouveau computer “bit” (=binary digit)?
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I think we still have enough non-digital usages to keep something more like the traditional meaning alive: _(wait) just a bit, a little bit more, feeling a bit tired_ , and so on don’t have a particularly quantized feel to them. So while the computerized sense may be active enough to influence things for some (which is what I read your word “conflate†to be implying) I think for most it is probably not that strong. For many of us I suspect that if we hear of bits of data in a computer context we probably just think “small pieces†rather than of single switches being on or off.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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