Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Coming on the eve of All Hallows Eve, this is one that we should have seen years ago.
With fervent imaginations they built a beautiful, make-believe villa on their haloed ground and pledge allegiance to each other forever.
Ebook
There are 90 raw ghits for it in the form “haloed ground”, most of them being genuine. The connection between halos and hallows is direct. Hallow was first a verb meaning “to make holy, sanctify”, before being nouned as “a saint, holy person.” It is cognate with hale and health. The convoluted origins of halo are worth quoting, from etymonline:
1560s, “ring of light around the sun or moon,” from Latin halo (nominative halos), from Greek halos “disk of the sun or moon; ring of light around the sun or moon” (also “disk of a shield”); “”threshing floor; garden,” of unknown origin. The sense “threshing floor” (on which oxen trod out a circular path) probably is the original in Greek. The development to “disk” and then to “halo” would be via roundness. Sense of “light around the head of a holy person or deity” first recorded 1640s. As a verb from 1791 (implied in Haloed).
The visionaries of haloed ground might think that haloed is pronounced with a short a.
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I find this one particularly attractive, probably something to do with that radiating nimbus of photons. A grand find, David.
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A good addition to our list of religious eggcorns. We’ve found about 60-70 of these.
This eggcorn reminds me of the wonderful confusion between “aureola” and “areola” that we touched on a couple of years ago.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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