Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I’m a copy editor. I tried to convince my boss it was “uncharted,” as in “not mapped” but couldn’t find it listed in any of my usual source materials. Anyone have an authoritative citation?
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I’m no authority on the phrase, but the OED seems to support your position. You might also point out to them that “unchartered etc.” gets only 107k Google hits while yours gets a whopping 1860k. Eggcorners really like Google.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2006-05-01 20:48:38)
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I just ran across this eggcorn today (in chat). Google still reports around 10x more hits for “uncharted territory”. The top hits for “unchartered” are intentional. I guess it’s an easy headline pun for any news story involving anything that could possibly by chartered.
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Just thought I’d resurrect this thread to share the example I just found a day or two ago. From the liner notes of a CD reissue of “Safe as Milk†by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: “This was the line-up which started taking off into previously unchartered musical territories…”. Actually, I have a feeling that I’ve heard or seen this eggcorn a number of times in the past. I think it’s a pretty common one.
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Oh yeah, here’s another one I just saw: ”...trap them on a small lifeboat in unchartered Pacific waters…” (from a theater lobby flier taken from Richard Corliss’s review of The Life of Pi in Time magazine). If that mistake actually appeared in Time rather than being added in the translation from Time to the flier—well then, shame on you, Corliss and Time!
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well then, shame on you, Corliss and Time!
Bonus dormitat Homerus. Even Homer nods.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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This eggcorn came to mind. It seemed worth mentioning that unchartered territory would be territory that you (or anyone else) have no authority or control over (no one having received a charter from a King or Pope or such), whereas uncharted territory is territory you (or anyone else) have no knowledge of (because there is no map of it).
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Both fit, but the second one fits better in most contexts where the phrase is used. So this eggcorn substitutes not only a less-common word for a more-common one, but a less-apropos metaphor for a more-apropos one. A lot of people use it, though.
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Unchartered waters , though are a bit different. Did kings and popes charter particular seas, or sea-routes? And even if you do have such a charter, the danger of shipwreck is not thereby diminished, as it is by having a good chart.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2020-09-06 10:16:50)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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