Eggcorn Forum

There has been discussion since early on about shoe being used for shoo , for instance here and here , but the discussion, if not the phenomenon, is, as the Database entry suggests, “ Chiefly in: a shoe-in”, where it is “nearly mainstream”. ringbark, in 2006, commented that ‘Rather worryingly, “shoe-in” at Google exceeds “shoo-in” by more than 2 to 1.’ Dixon and fpberger speculate that the ideas of fitting like a shoe (that fits like a glove; though Dixon has the foot fitting the shoe rather than verse visa), of throwing your shoe rather than your hat into the ring, or getting a shoe (no doubt including the toe) in the door ahead of the rest might be involved.
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I have been running into shoe < shoo in other contexts too.

Despite UP Govt trying it’s best to shoe her away, city off electricity & water supply but she didn’t move, she was resolute that she won’t leave

people are always in the kitchen no matter how small…as much as you try to shoe them off into the living room, they won’t go.

she had snuck in at every opportunity. She would be shoed out by Anne, her governess or her mother when she was discovered.

Scream obscenities, shoe them off and slam the door in their faces. They’re numb to this rejection. They’ll just move on to the next house.

People get out to shoe them out of the way, to which the geese just look at you like they wish they had sharp teeth

and so forth. There are many more.
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I find it easy to imagine eggcornish motivation for these cases too. Prototypical shooing, for me is done with hands and mouth (saying something like “Sh!Sh!”), but the feet may be involved as well. There are several ways one can use one’s feet to cause someone else to move, whether by a serious kicking or stomping (along with the obscenities and door-slamming suggested in one of the quotes) or a softer shoving or sweeping or scooting motion; in any case the notion of looking down at/on the one shoed off comes easily, and the point of contact between shoer and shoee is likely to be the shoe. This family of construals is rather different from those suggested above for shoe-in , but they could well be active in some shoe-in cases as well.
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If such eggcornicity is active in people’s minds, it might help explain why the spelling “shoe” is so common in these contexts. Of course, the vast difference in ordinariness and statistical predominance of the spelling shoe as opposed to shoo in general might be enough explanation. In any case, as is so often the case, a writer’s misspelling can easily become a reader’s eggcorn.
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(I assume that shoe and shoo are complete homonyms, pronounced exactly the same [ʃu:], so this, absent a perp’s confession, would be an eggcorn revealed only by the spelling. If anybody distinguishes pronunciation of the two words, it would be interesting to know which way they pronounce these.)

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2020-09-21 11:19:41)