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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2017-06-07 05:22:50

EmilyBuehler
Member
Registered: 2017-06-07
Posts: 1

Fire powder instead of firepower

Hello, I was writing this morning and came across a passage where I’d written “fire powder” instead of “firepower,” and I thought it might be an eggcorn. It’s an old-fashioned war scene where guns would be loaded with gunpowder, so there was something that worked about it either way. I searched the database and did not see it.

I’m new to the forum so my apologies if I didn’t do this properly.

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#2 2017-06-08 06:41:12

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: Fire powder instead of firepower

Hi, Emily. Welcome to the Forum.

“Firepowder” for “firepower” is a possible eggcorn. Here’s someone else who made the same mistake.

It’s hard to find examples of this substitution on the web, however, because “firepowder” has become a mot du jour among the fantasy crowd, an antique-sounding term for gunpowder.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#3 2020-12-28 06:28:12

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: Fire powder instead of firepower

A BBC Comedy piece on fb today had a piece on the Colombian game of tejo. Looks like a lot of fun. The local guide explained that the targets on the clay board are filled with gunpower. English is clearly not her first language, so it may be a question of pronunciation, but the expression is clearly apt. It would be easy to leave a letter out of gunpowder when typing, so I didn’t try to find other examples on the web.

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