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#1 2019-10-09 11:22:09

Peter Forster
Eggcornista
From: UK
Registered: 2006-09-06
Posts: 1258

"dogtail' for 'dovetail"

Whether we are capable of making one or not, I imagine most of us are familiar with the method of joining wood called the dovetail joint featuring birdy rear ends disappearing round the right angle. The rear end of a dog can provide an alternative visual interpretation as it doesn’t seem too unreasonable to see those wedge shapes as splayed pendulum sweeps of a cheery tail.

Preferably, the connection between the carrier member and the heatcurable structural adhesive is an adhesive bond, a form- and/or a force-fit (e.g. dog-tail joint).

What follows is an intense whirlwind of intrigue, betrayal, and corruption that so perfectly dogtails into it’s own conclusion that it’s comparable to a critically …

“I think that Ira and I specifically, are interested in bringing that history of Ben Cooper so it dogtails into the pop culture that it derived off for …

... any more is directly contradicted in DS9 where currency-based trade is still commonplace and dogtails into the Federation economy just fine.

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#2 2019-10-10 07:49:49

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2752
Website

Re: "dogtail' for 'dovetail"

“featuring birdy rear ends disappearing round the right angle.” Classic.
.
I am not sure why, given how well the image you suggest works, but (I think) the word somehow always evoked in my mind the diagonally overlapping of sets of feathers coming in from different angles, rather than the fanned-out shape of the bird’s tail. There’s a suggestion of non-straightness about dogs in my mind—in running dog-fashion your hind legs don’t track with the front ones so your body is at diagonal to your path, and then there’s the word dog-leg . That diagonality might also disappear round the right angle and help explain this new usage.
.
I wonder if there’s hidden in there some slight connection to the dodging/dogging of one’s heels (nipping at the heels, attacking from the side instead of straight ahead?)

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2019-10-10 21:25:17)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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