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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Came across “it’s not racket science†in one of the twitter feeds I follow. Turns out it is quite a common replacement of “it’s not rocket science.†Examples.
forum post: “Or even less modern approach and little coarse one would be acceptable: option in menu to do it. It is not racket science.â€
Tech blog: “Do you like this code? Yes this is nothis special and for sure this is not racket science.â€
Education blog: “Kudos to the Mayor, for those of us who toil in the academic vineyards it is not racket science, if kids don’t come to school on a regular basis their chances of success are slim. â€
I’m having trouble imagining what image would motivate this change.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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A few years ago, I heard one of my college students say, “It’s not brain science”, merging “rocket science” with “brain surgery”.
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
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kem wrote:
Came across “it’s not racket science†in one of the twitter feeds I follow. Turns out it is quite a common replacement of “it’s not rocket science.â€...
...I’m having trouble imagining what image would motivate this change.
Possibly there’s a notion that “racket science” would be bad science in the service of some scam or racket; there’s certainly plenty of that around. Those saying “It’s not racket science” may mean that the idea they’re conveying is true.
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Kem had reported (in what must have been one of his first posts , since jorkel welcomed him to the forum after it) “it’s not rocket surgeryâ€, which is of course the flip side of “not brain scienceâ€, but more strikingly anomalous. “Brain science†could possibly be an independent formation, but “rocket surgery†is much less likely to be so. (Though I can imagine that building and perhaps even more repairing rocket components might be so ticklish that one might be inspired to employ surgery as a metaphor for the process.)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Feeling old today.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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