Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
Seen on the Casfina website today, “Paired-back materials, clean lines, textured finishes and flawless craftsmanship are essential …”
What do you say, do I have a lightly boiled eggcorn here ?
Bi-lingual English / French amateur etymologist and all-round pedant
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Paired-back makes me think of peeling a banana, though they more easily are threesomed-back, I guess. It doesn’t seem so likely that the perp is thinking that way, though I guess it is possible. Otherwise, I’d call it a malapropistic misspelling. (It does seem likely that the perp, like many others, is not that familiar with paring by that name, and thus is at a loss for the meaning of the standard phrase.)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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We’ve done “paired/pared” before (here), but that was in the context of “pared down.” “Paired/pared back” slips have more of a claim to residence in the eggcornome, I think. Paring down puts the focus on the whittled-away whole. Paring back turns our attention to the shaving/whole pair.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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