Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
In his 2018 list of uniquecorns David B included what he called “the yawning gape of the door ajaw.â€
open all the doors and give each door latch a shot of wd-40 then open and shut each door several times.The problem with these is that the door ajaw switches stick over time with dirt and grime. https://repairpal.com/my-door-ajar-ligh … e-time-511
The mismatch with ajar in the url suggests a mistake (rather than something the perpetrator actually thinks is correct, as should be the case with eggcorns). w and r are two keys away from each other on a qwerty keyboard, so it might well enough be a hunt-and-peck kind of typo. There is a newer citation, though:
Witness had left the door ajaw. Prisoner was an occasional customer. On the day in question prisoner came to his house at about 2:30, and …
Might of course be another such mistake. But the notion of a open door being like a dropped jaw (such as you experience when yawning) rings bells with me. The notion of a gaping yaw also fits in with it somewhere.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2020-09-05 08:30:22)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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