Eggcorn Forum

I like it. “Tarred with the same brush” is an in-the-language construction, so one could argue that any close-sounding departures of it might be eggcorns.

What is particularly compelling about it is the flawed notion of tarnishing something with a brush. (Things don’t normally get tarnished that way, do they?). I find that imperfect imagery—or imagery that involves a stretch of the imagination—is often the domain of eggcorns. So, I got a good chuckle out of this one.

I guess I would also add that the utters probably prefer the connotations of “tarnished” over “tarred.” (The rest of the expression just got carried along because it’s a familiar construction). To me, “tarnished” seems to have a more insidious origin—one of natural consequence. And “tarred” conjures a messier, mudslinging feel to it. But that’s only my interpretation. Perhaps someone could comment on the precise imagery intended with expression “tarred with the same brush.”

Last edited by jorkel (2008-02-23 10:22:13)

I would argue that the verb “to tarnish” is inherently passive—one does not actively tarnish something, rather something tarnishes all by itself over time, even when the effect is desired and induced. Moreover the phrase “tarred with the same brush” specifically pertains to persons and their actions, not to inanimate objects, and one wouldn’t—couldn’t—tarnish a person, with a brush or otherwise.

There’s another interesting take on the idiom here: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tar1.htm

Last edited by wayner (2008-02-25 12:52:15)

also, remember that we are talking eggcorns, not strictly exact and proper usage.

Eggcorns are created by people’s associations—not by their knowledge of exactly how terms are traditionally used. Someone who even understands the IDEA of transitive or intransitive verbs will probably not be making many eggcorns.

If people have a vision of stuff rusting, or tarnishing, or oxidizing, and they can connect it with something that is brushed on, then they might make this leap.

I think nilep is right, though—that the “tarnished reputation” is much more likely to have fueled this eggcorn.

Last edited by TootsNYC (2008-02-27 12:36:40)

Is painting someone with a long brush like using a long spoon when you sup with the Devil? (Trying to avoid direct contact, maintaining enough distance to quarantine, either because those you are painting are evil or disgusting, or because if you get too close you are liable to get spattered by your own paint/tar?)
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I can also get it to work in my mind as painting inaccurately/sloppily because painting from a distance. This fits the context (blaming France as a whole because of the attitudes of a few French actresses), as of course the broad brush connection does as well or better.

Ol’ Stretch-Leg is Death, not quite the Debble. (Thank Gosh for that!)

(Wasn’t in the catacombs? You must’ve looked at my Scarecrow Nouns or Abrelatas paper. I am flattered! It was in a family of forms I found in the OED built on the Scarecrow pattern but with the verb stretch :

Some verbs, for instance, such as add , do not have any [Scarecrow-noun] forms [in the OED] constructed using them; others may have many. Stretch , for instance, has stretch-gut “glutton”, stretch-halter or stretch-hemp “gallows bird, one who deserves to be hung”, stretch-leg “that which lays prostrate, Death”, stretch-neck “pillory”, and stretch-rope “bell-ringer”. Often a number of forms wind up with very similar meanings: besides the still occasionally used clutch-fist, pinch-penny , and skin-flint , there were many other forms meaning “miser”, including (for nip alone) nip-cake, nip-crumb, nip-cheese , and nip-farthing . A similarly large number meant “criminal”: of these cut-purse, cut-throat, pick-pocket, turn-coat , and, in their social sphere, kill-joy, spoil-sport , and tattle-tale survive, while many other picturesque terms such as stretch-hemp (above) and thatch-gallows have been lost. Among the many forms constructed on lack (e.g. lack-land “younger son”, lack-beard “immature youth”, lack-all “deficient person”), there were at least seven forms meaning “intellectually deficient person”: lack-brain, lack-latin, lack-learning, lack-mind, lack-sense, lack-thought , and lack-wit .

Isn’t English the most wonderful language?)
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PS I found it after all, well-encombed, in your thread about the death-kneel

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2019-08-09 08:01:29)

Concrete bodily actions as meanings make for prototypical verbs in all kinds of constructions. A cross-cutting motivation here is the habit of using these words as insults, a function that they seem to suit admirably. Deficiency is such good grounds for ridicule that you might explain the lack-N forms (of which there were more, as I remember, than those I listed) on that basis.
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There are plenty of other forms where the verb does not clearly denote a concrete bodily action, of course, including turn (coat) (does a turncoat turn his coat as a snowshoe hare does, or how?), thatch (gallows) (note that the designated person is the thatch, not the thatcher), spoil (sport), and tattle (tale) from the sample above. Even the stretching that a stretchgut or stretchhemp does are not exactly bodily actions in the typical sense.
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You say, Kem, “The key to a tosspot word is that it is a compound made from a verb modifying a noun, where the noun is the object of the verb.” I am not sure what “modify” means in this context: I would have said the verb is followed by the noun, but neither is clearly a modifier of the other, just as neither is head of the construction so as to be modified by the other. Surely another criterion would be that the designatum (or exocentric head) of the whole is the subject of the verb, and not the object. Otherwise forms like push-pin (where the designatum/head is the object) or lack-luster (where the designatum is the adjectival quality of tending to do the verb w.r.t. the object) and various other related types will be included in the category. That grouping is also of course interesting, but probably not as useful as limiting the definition to V + Obj = Subj forms, as most people seem to do in practice.
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A thing I find fascinating is comparing the construction to the similar (and undoubtedly at least partially cognate) Spanish construction, which is quite productive still (the English one is mostly limited to new Verb + all forms.) The patterns coincide in particular forms (as e.g. in scarecrow and espantapájaros ) far less often than one might have supposed, and they differ in interesting ways. For instance, the Spanish pattern prefers plural nouns ―the pájaros are plural even when the scarecrow is one: why don’t we call it a scares-crows?―, and it is highly productive for naming tools, whereas the English one is (or was) not typically used for that.
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(Re Anu Garg’s column that Kem linked to: does a flapjack flap a jack? Why is that word in the list?)

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2019-08-28 00:34:51)

No, a tosspot is a tippler; he tosses his head, with the pot, back, to let the good stuff flow down his throat. So, yes, the pot gets tossed by the tosspot, just like a crow ideally gets scared by a scarecrow, or your fast gets broken by your breakfast, or the gallows (ought to) get thatched by a thatchgallows. (The word’s been around since Shakespeare, though it’s not a common one.)
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Toss is not there to tell us (and not telling us much) about what kind of pot we are dealing with, nor is pot there to tell us (nor telling us much) about what kind of tossing is in mind. The combination of the two is telling us what the subject (the designatum of the word, the tosspot him or perhaps her-self) does, and thus it describes (modifies?) him or her. You might think of it as a miniature headless relative clause: “[one] (that) tosses a pot”.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2019-08-28 12:42:50)

I was using the word “modify” in its nontechnical sense. Shouldn’t have done that around a crowd of language people. My bad.

Flap means “to fold roughly.” “Jack,” I assume, is the generic male, as in “every man Jack” and “lumberjack.” “Flapjack” was used in England for a fried fruit tart (perhaps is still?) long before it was adapted to the farinaceous compound that North Americans eat for breakfast.

Jack may have some colloquial connections to apples. Applejack?