Eggcorn Forum

(Sort of related to a comment on Kem’s Seabees entry.)
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I thought this was a typo when I ran across it

Describe how the psuedo rate constant, k’ , is determined from the experimental data. Also describe how k, the true rate constant, is determined form the experimantal data.

and it still may well be just a typo (fingerslip metathesis, like form later in the quote) in this and many other particular cases. But of course there is an iconic appropriateness in naming what is false by a mistaken form, one which may look like the right form but is not.
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I was surprised, looking it up, to find that there are definitions available online, in the Urban Dictionary (first two definitions below) and elsewhere, for the word. It seems extra-comfortable in nerdspeak.

[U.D.] Top definition psuedo false; not real; fake replication; bootleg; tomfoolery The upside down question mark as seen in mario kart 64 can be considered a psuedo box. by El_Scorcho August 25, 2003

[U.D.] psuedo PRONOUNCED (swaydo) 1. Something having a level of hipness or edge that is of retro orient. 2. Something old and useless that is paraded around in order to evoke irony. ¶ A malapropism from the actual word psuedo pronounced improperly and used to mean something throwback or retro (usually from the 1980s). All things have a certain level of psuedo-ness and can therefor can be more or less psuedo than another item. Griffin: what do you like better? cds or tapes? Tom: well cds are more efficient, but you know tapes are…
more psuedo. by SCILLIANAIRE January 30, 2007

[Wiktionary] psuedo (not comparable) ¶ Misspelling of pseudo.

Interesting that the Wiktionary comments that it is “not comparable”, whereas Scillianaire insists that a thing can “be more or less psuedo than another item,” and then gives an example of it. Also interesting that Scillianaire’s entry can be reasonably read as implying that the mispronunciation is purposeful, derived from the misspelling rather than the other way around, and intended to signal the changed meaning.
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Eggcorn, or not? Not for those who use it purposefully, aware of its anomaly, for them it is a kind of pun. But for others, early in its history, perhaps. (I suppose I could be psuede, or for that matter psueded, either way on the issue.)

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2020-07-25 09:53:11)