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Chris -- 2018-04-11
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Have you heard U.S. soldiers and marines talking about finding “an arms CACHET?” They say it all the time in news briefings, over in Iraq. Of course they mean CACHE. This mistake surprises me, since the word CACHE has been common for the past fifteen years or so, as a term for a kind of computer memory.
Point of order: Should I keep posting non-eggcorns such as this? I believe anybody who likes eggcorns would like this type of thing. But if not, please tell me where to go with this stuff.
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Okay, you guys, I am commenting on my own post because…
Before I put this CACHET/CACHE thing up, I searched within this eggcorn site, for CACHET, and the site search thing gave me nuthin. But just now, I looked for CACHET OF WEAPONS on regular Google, and the Google sent me back to this eggcorn site.
So, I am sorry to duplicate, and I am not as clever as I thought I was, but what the heck? I do not want to waste you attention with stuff you already have seen. I have plenty more. Am I misunderstanding the purpose of the site search window here at eggcorn? How can I improve?
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You posted this in exactly right place—thanks! This page of the Forum (“Slips,etc.”) is intended for discussion of absolutely ANYTHING related to usage, vocabulary, language, etc. that’s not an eggcorn. Not everyone may be interested in cachet vs. cache, but hey, that’s why you gave a brief description in the header. Carry on….
And for anyone who is interested in “cache/cachet,” here’s Carl Hart’s original post:
# 71 Commentary by Carl Hart , 2005/02/26 at 6:15 pm
“cachet†instead of “cacheâ€, very commonly: “a cachet of weaponsâ€
“Tips indicated that a man who lived at the residence had stored a cachet of weapons and knew something about the shooting, according to police.â€
from www.gazette.net/200241/bo…
“…when he was involved in preparations for an armed raid against Cuba and a cachet of weapons in his possession was seizedâ€
from www.spectrezine.org/resis…
If a word seems to be of French origin and has a silent “e” at the end, English-speakers—or at least Americans—have a really strong tendency to pronounce that final “e” like an accented French “e.” Or they spell it like another French-derived word that does have that accented “e.” Another example is “forte,” meaning “something one is particularly good at.” In the sentence “Historical phonology is not my forte,” the traditional pronunciation for “forte” was exactly the same as “fort.” Recently, people have begun pronouncing it like the (Italian-derived) “forte” in “fortepiano.” That doesn’t bother me too much. But I am bothered when people correct me, and say that I’m pronouncing the word incorrectly when I don’t say “for-TAY.” I don’t say “for-TAY” because, well, that’s not how the word was pronounced when I learned it. This used to be a real money-spinner for me—I kept betting people who challenged me on the issue. Now, unfortunately, the more recent pronunciation is starting to show up in dictionaries, so it’s harder to collect.
The cache/cachet, forte thing can be irksome, but there’s a way in which I find it reassuring. People who do this kind of thing have a certain, subconscious awareness of etymology; they’re aware on some level that these words have French (or at least Romance) origins, and they’re trying to make them even “Frencher.” It’s an ill-informed etymological awareness, but the fact that it exists at all and is so common actually surprises me a bit.
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I found a nifty older post about trying too hard to speak French. If you put canape (=hors d’oeuvre) into the search window, you can read what poster Elgee has to say about staying out of the rain.
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It works the other way too. Last weekend I saw an article in which the writer referred to x not having the cache of y, meaning not having such a high status. Cachet was obviously intended. It might have been a typo, but I don’t think it was the first time I had seen it. It was in either the Guardian or the Observer and probably by Barbara Ellen, but I can’t be certain.
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The tendency to make pronunications even Frencher shows up elsewhere, too. Among the ones I’ve noticed: dropping consanant sounds from the ends of French words , like Vichysoise and Deascartes (Vichysoi and Descar), and pronouncing all French e’s as if with an acute accent (crapes are thin pancakes).
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I mean vichyssoise, of course. Ahem.
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Another similar example I’ve noticed is the pronunciation of “coup de grace” as “coup de gras.” (The latter being a [culinary] pun in some situations, but usually people clearly mean to say “coup de grace” in the “finishing blow” sense.)
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I’ve heard (a sincere example of) “coup de gras” once, and I was particularly interested in the fact that it occurred in the speech of an extremely well-educated acquaintance. We tend to associate the mangling of phrases with “the uneducated” (whoever they are), but I think there are certain linguistic misconceptions that the hypereducated are actually more vulnerable to. The words “Mardi gras” and “foie gras” may cause a bit of interference in the case of “coup de grace.”
The Wikipedia article on “coup de grace” has a brief but useful paragraph on “coup de gras”:
The French pronunciation of the phrase is [ku dÉ™? gras], but English speakers sometimes mispronounce it as [ku de’gra]. Not pronouncing the final “c” is an example of a hyperforeignism: in French, this mispronunciation sounds like coup de gras, which means “a blow of fat.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_de_gr%C3%A2ce
The Wikipedia article on “hypercorrection” also has an entertaining section on “hyperforeignism” that addresses many of the issues (and some of the individual words) that we’ve discussed in this thread:
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A couple of Spanish examples not mentioned in the Wikipedia article are “Los Vegas” and the pronunciation of Pinochet as if he was French.
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patschwieterman wrote:
“That doesn’t bother me too much. But I am bothered when people correct me, and say that I’m pronouncing the word incorrectly when I don’t say “for-TAY.†I don’t say “for-TAY†because, well, that’s not how the word was pronounced when I learned it. This used to be a real money-spinner for me—I kept betting people who challenged me on the issue….”
Wow, I’m impressed. I knew I enjoyed what I was learning from this website, but I hadn’t before realized one could profit from such knowledge!
—Lisa
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