Eggcorn Forum

I was listening to a video clip and one of the participants used a word he pronounced [‘plɔɾɪtudz]. From the context he clearly meant ‘platitudes’. I don’t remember hearing that before. I checked, and to my slight surprise both that and [‘plæɾɪtudz] are accepted by at least some dictionaries; the latter (the way I pronounce it) is preferred.
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The /ɔ/ was clearly (lip)rounded, but given the /a//ɔ/ collapse in much American English, and the neutralization to flapped /ɾ/ of /t/ and /d/, I can imagine this new (to me) pronunciation being spelled at least four ways: plotitude, ploditude, plautitude , or plauditude . All (of course) appear on the Internet, though not particularly commonly; plotitude the most often, I think.
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Here are some examples:
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Plotitude

today’s speaker of the house emerged to make his first public remarks. and if you’re expecteding more plotitudes about
working together and finding common ground with president obama, well, you came to the wrong press conference.

Superpowers’ Plotitudes Refuted. All these lies and dirty tricks of the superpowers received a head-on blow from the
representatives of the third World countries. Refuting the nonsense about. “disarmament,” the representative of Burundi
stated that the arms race is, first of all, an attribute of big powers seeking hegemony

Well it was fun, but I don’t really understand all of DeeCee’s cross-organization plotitudes. I have to sweep up some
motorcycle drones, though, before they start to smell.”

For some it seems like the word plot may be in there; if platitudes are used to cover nefarious motives, plotitude works pretty well. Unsurprisingly, some hits smell of conscious wordplay. E.g.:

And think of a whole gar- don of such thoughts flower plotitudes! Of all mv flowers I like best tho Poppycock

Here for you, fresh out of a nice head-cold and a long weekend, is. My Immortal by Tara “Tata” Gillespie (Everyone’s
favorite troll!?), translated into English and a semi-decent plot-itude by yours truly. I’m adding my own plot points where
this one gets (stays?) weak.

Ploditude :

Here’s another ploditude, a piece of advice I have been following myself for several days. Beyond having some idea of where I’m staying at the end of the day, I am no longer consulting my guide book all the time, or counting the kilometres to each town, but simply walking and enjoying whatever happens. Carpo diem.

Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man · 100 Days of Ploditude · El Gordo ·

These are quite certainly word-play, and I found none that looked to me like real eggcorn candidates. I can sort of imagine trite, pedestrian phrases being called by the name, but I lack any good examples.
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Plauditude

Normally he would have greeted him with a plauditude for his wisdom, but Nicodemus had heard far more about his
workings than his teaching, so he praised him for his miracles.

a paper of high character setting forth clearly his views upou public questions and free from demagogic plauditude There
was no sop to any clan or class but a platform if carried into execution …

This one could be live. Pretty clearly the idea of praise (from plaud or plaudit ) seems meant: if your platitudes are used for (in)sincere praise, or if your expression of praise is trite, it works pretty well.
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Plautitude

how are you expecting twitter or the government or whoever to stop people saying nasty things on the internet? it’s not
remotely helpful to give some meaningless plautitude about how it needs to stop.

They rose against their ‘capitalist oppressors’ (note the careful Leftist plautitude here folks) and murdered still uncounted
numbers of Tutsis in an orgy of murder, rape and destruction

I don’t see any semantic leaking from the similar stem (plut, plout,) meaning (free-flowing) riches. Not sure what else might be in peoples minds associated with plaut as opposed to the other spellings. But:

Remove Greece from history, and our culture and knowledge becomes far less rich. Remove Rome from history, and all of
European history will become totally unrecognizable. This is just a plautitude i’m afraid (excuse the pun). None has the
slightest clue how history would be if any piece of it was “removed” or did not happen as it did. Perhaps as i mentioned
earlier we would all be speaking Persian or using the Celtic calendar now, instead of the Roman one (that was devised by
Greeks;).

This is confessedly wordplay. I am not sure if the connection to the loss of riches is intended, or a reference to Plautus (which would seem more apropos if he were an historian instead of a comic playwright).
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In some : plotitude and plauditude might well be eggcorns in some of the usages above or elsewhere, ploditude could be if we could find good examples. Plautitude seems less likely overall.
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fwiw the ‘right’ pronunciation might also be written plattitude , and reasonably often is. I don’t see anything strikingly eggcornish there, but there might be if you thought about it. An attitude of plattitude (being easily pleased ?) can take you a long way…
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Last edited by DavidTuggy (2017-12-26 12:23:09)