Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Without doing the research, I posited to a friend that three current Americanisms have fairly obvious roots:
1. “It is what it is” I would guess c.f. “That’s the way it is.” (with apologies to Eric Clapton for omitting “just”)
2. “one off” I would guess c.f. “One of a kind.” What’s was wrong the original term “unique?”
3. “bespoke” is a high-falutin’ way of ripping off the British word and using it as the American equivalent of “custom” or “custom made” or even “curated,” all the way back to “one off.”
Do any of you wish to proffer an opinion on or a factual reply to any of the above?
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General American is sometimes broadly characterized as “speaking with a midwestern accent,”American’ accent or notions like ‘network English’ there is in fact no single norm of pronunciation
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Does “c.f.” mean “comes from” ? That’s a new usage, to me, if so. Eggcornish, in fact: a few know cf. c.f. Latin confer “compare”, but for most of us it’s pretty much just an arbitrary written but not spoken word. So if people are thinking of it as an abbreviation of “comes from”, and thinking that is the standard usage, it meets my criteria.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2017-08-04 07:15:36)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Yes, David, c.f. for “comes from” is new to me, too. I agree with you about its eggcornishness, joining the ranks of “et all”, “at hominem/ad homonym”, et al
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
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