Eggcorn Forum

I took your challenge, Jorkel. Is the use of upfield for afield a substitution of prefixes, or a direct substitution of words, since the two exist already? I went looking for new coinages that depend on sticking an up- where an a- should be (blushes), when the presence of up gives a new direction to the word.

The easiest find needed the presence of a b in the second position.

Chilean blog about the Beagle voyage:
The young and noble sailor Robert Fitz-Roy was also part of this mission, all upboard the Beagle ship. (http://www.nuestro.cl/eng/stories/recovery/fitz_roy.htm)

Pregnancy forum:
Welcome Becky, Marlena, Eliza, and Jo. Glad to have you all upboard .
(I couldn’t put the link in without causing problems)

We have All upboard, so I looked for “anchors upweigh”. No luck, I suppose because the direction is opposite to “away”. Upweigh is there, however, as substitution for “outweigh”:

Software forum:
That being said, that does in no way upweigh the negative side, which is that the app is very deficient in the functionality it is supposed to deliver (http://www.versiontracker.com/php/feedb … 1071147317)

Rosacea forum: As they clamp the nerve that is overactive for flushing\blushing\sweating on face therefore you can REVERSE. If one of the few % that gets too dry or the side affects upweigh the benefits then you simply reverse the procedure. (http://rosacea-support.org/community/vi … ?f=3&t=170)

Back to ab words, for upbundance, upundant and upundance:

Boat for sale:
An upbundance of storage under the berth along with a hanging locker and three drawer storage to port.
(http://www.boatpile.com/70/posts/1_POWE … 5_000.html)

Iraq war forum: In fact these countries have the richest people have the ghighest quality healthcare, and social services in the world. They have thriving and upundant societies. (http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-24275.html)

Blog: My hereos are Maddonna and daffy duck! Also lovin Homer Simpson! that man has an upundance of wisdom.

Beer forum: M-Mouthfeel is medium with an upundance of carbonation. Crisp and dry. D-This is a great beer to sit around with and have a few.
(somewhere down the list on http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/14 … &start=110)

“An upundance of carbonation” – sweet! Next, upsorb for absorb … a natural, 6000 rghits:

TV board: sup with sylar i thought he learn to upsorb powers? (http://www.tv.com/heroes/show/17552/pet … /msgs.html)

Life extension board: KH3 was developed by German scientists and contains half the procaine normally found in the GH3 tablet; with additional enzymes for those who are poorly able to upsorb nutrients from the gastrointestinal tract. (http://forum.lef.org/pr.aspx?f=35&m=22312)

There was only one “upsorbent” (except for the cute acombination on an exercise site: pull-upsorbent arm hang):

to keep you black car looking good well there are several alternatives you can use ether you can gat a wather upsorbent rag it looks like its made if skin/leather but is has a cream white color this is realy effective sucks up wather (http://www.automotivehelper.com/topic266224.htm

I couldn’t leave the next example out, despite the young age of the poster and the wobbly spelling throughout (note tank of assed). Asked to imagine the outcome of a fight between Spongebob Squarepants and a ninja:

i think that the ninga would win we would bring sponge bob on land and put him in a tank of assed so insted of obsorving water he would upsorb water
(well… : http://fans.askaninja.com/forum/topics/ … opic:18155)

Another odd misspelling, upsense for absence:

The role of juju in football/soccer:
u see the reason why no body is responding or replying to this post of urs is because you,re just being a hippocrite excuse my language but i donot know the actual word to use inthe upsense of this one. (http://discussions.ghanaweb.com/viewtop … 4b30666b3a)

I looked next for “at the upex” – sounds logical, don’t you think? Unfortunately, the search yielded only 6 silicisms and 13 references to an acronym.

Finally, how about upsessment , maybe in the context of being promoted? Upsessment is there, but only as a mangled version of obsession. I know from a previous search that there are many many uses of “upsess” for obsess. I tried to find, at that time, instances of a blend of upset and obsess, without luck. It’s a pure misspelling.

Last edited by burred (2009-04-05 20:02:55)

David – upsessive compulsive, excessive-compelsive and abcessive-compulsive killed me. The second and third of these provide clearer images of the affliction than does its true name.

I realized after reading your posts that I had only looked for the adjective upsorbent and not the noun form upsorbant. That search lead first to another Squarepants riff:

Who lives in a pinapple under the sea?
Spongebob Squarepants!
Upsorbant and yellow and porous is he.
Spongebob Squearepants!
(http://slye-soul.deviantart.com/journal/18807640/)

And then this lil gem—self upsorbant for “self-absorbed”:

Comment on Lil Bow Wow video:
another self upsorbant kid
(http://74.125.93.104/search?q=cache:OYr … =firefox-a)

And then this lil gem—self upsorbant for “self-absorbed”: ¶ Comment on Lil Bow Wow video: another self upsorbant kid

Just suck it up and keep going!

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-04-06 11:08:23)

DavidTuggy wrote:

We are trying to hold a breast of the situation

Stimulating! Note that I’ve edited my post with the confirmation that your examples provided.

Last edited by burred (2009-04-06 13:20:52)

In summarizing the jujitsu of eggcornical preposition replacement in my last post, I started thinking prepositional emplacement, the insertion of a preposition into a place where it doesn’t belong.

English and the Romance languages went though periods of latinate correction during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the years when Latin was the unchallenged second language of scholarship. One target of this grammatical zeal was the lost preposition. Some English and French words that had assimilated their Latin-derived prepositional prefixes had their prepositions restored. “Adore” is one of these rescued words. Derived from L. ad + orare, “adore” lost its interior “d” in the middle ages and got it back in the Renaissance.

This tendency to correct words to their Latin sources would be nothing more than a footnote to an essay on the strong influence exercised by classical languages in this period, were not for the fact that some words were restored under false assumptions. One of these hypercorrective restorations happened to the word “advance.” It looks like it derives from L. “ad-“ + “vance,” does it not? But there is no Latin word “vance.” High school French suggests an alternate history for the word: in French the cognate is “avance” (En avance is a common expression for “early.”). The Latin source of the word “avance” is probably L. “ab-“ + “ante,” meaning from before. In the sixteenth century some English and French writer, under the impression that the initial letter was a remnant of the Latin preposition “ad,” began to spell the word as “advance.” French soon recovered from the misstep, English never. It is a little known fact that Wellington, the man who fought to keep the world safe from democracy, warned his troops on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo that if they were not victorious every man Jack of them would be forced to change the spelling of “advance.” The troops shouted “Long live the English hypercorrection.”

“Advantage” is another of these hypercorrected fellows. Its history is parallel to that of its cousin, “advance.” The word “admiral” is now believed to have suffered from similar hypercorrection to a supposed Latin “ad-“ prefix. The word “admiral” derives, it is thought, from an early Arabic term “amir,” leader, and immediately after its borrowing from Arabic the word was spelled without a “d.” But it came to English through Latin, causing grammarians to think that it must have a suppressed history in the Latin language. Various attempts were made to restore the prefix to one of the Latin prepositions beginning with “a.” The “ad-“ restoration stuck, giving us a word that looks like it comes from “ad-“ + “mirus,” presumably a cousin of “admire” (which really does derive from a Latin “ad-“ word: “ad” + “mirari”, to wonder at ). The confusion between “admiral” and “admirable” may be the reason that we call certain species of European and North American butterflies “admirals.” The name has puzzled entomologists, who could see no connection between the office and the insect. The butterfly with the lambent orange stripes was originally called the “admirable” butterfly.

Last edited by kem (2014-06-28 07:46:04)

kem wrote:

It is a little known fact that Wellington, the man who fought to keep the world safe from democracy, warned his troops on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo that if they were not victorious every man Jack of them would be forced to lose change the spelling of “advance.” The troops responded by shouting “Long live the English hypercorrection.”

I presume that was shouted especially loudly by the archers waving their fingers.

Kem wrote:

The Latin loan phrases “ad hominem,” “ad nauseum,” and “ad infinitum” also appear, with great frequency, as “at hominem,” “at nauseum,” and “at infinitum,” substituting “at,” an English preposition of locality, for the Latin “ad,” which usually indicates “direction toward.”

Ad nauseam. But the slip is understandable—it’s easy to fall under the sound-symbolic sway of “ad infinitum” and “ad libitum”....

Just ran across this:

There are monthly or quarterly meetings held to upbreast each other of any disaster happenings in and around the country.

Update was presumably the intended target here, rather than up-to-date as in the quasi-prepositional usages.

“Right again as usual!”, cried the Duchess. “What a clear way you have of putting things!”

Upscond bears the scars from being up ducted before.

abraid/abrade is relevant. Also upprehension. This discussion has indeed gone pretty far upfield.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2023-09-08 19:08:38)