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Chris -- 2025-05-10
[My dad took me to see World Champion 5-Gaited Stallion Wing Commander, and] he took my breadth away.
This just took my breadth away – and I exhaled slow when I started breathing again.
Vitus Cathedral Exterior – This just took my breadth away! Inside St. Vitus Cathedral View from the top!
Many more examples can easily be found.
The breath <> breadth pair has been mentioned before, e.g. here or here , but not in this particular configuration.
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It is very possibly a non-eggcornical error in many or all cases, a simple malaprop, a typo inserting the d, or something. David B suggests “phoneme perseveration” as the explanation for “hold your breadth”.
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But maybe there’s something more. My sister, who first reported it to me, under questioning suggested that having your breath taken away might involve the expansion of your ribcage being stopped. That explanation might hold for “holding your breath” as well. Maybe there is also or instead some kind of notion of your bandwidth being reduced as you fixate on what takes your breadth away.
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I’d classify it as a definite maybe.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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