Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
During a recent curriculum revision meeting, a public school principal commented that “the plan needed to be flushed out before it could be adopted.”
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I just heard this—actually saw it in a document, too—from my boss. She said she knew there was also “fleshed out” but picked “flushed out” because it made more sense to her.
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Sounds eggcornish to me – it is a different imagery.
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A classic. It’s in the Database here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/349/flush/
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I just stumbled upon this example in a Facebook post:
One part of a five part homework assignment and I spent about 3 hours flushing it out properly… Oh boy my algebra teacher made me want to be really clear with problem solving.
I was gonna do a web search on some form of “flush out” to get a sense of how common it is, but couldn’t figure out any way to phrase it that wouldn’t yield a zillion non-eggcornish results—a haystack in which it’d be hard to find the eggcornish needles. I do encounter that problem occasionally when trying to research possible eggcorns. Oh, the life of an eggcornista is hard!
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One technique is to look for a common phrase that calls for the desired meaning and look for that. In this case, flush out the details brings up lots of hits.
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I remember running across this years ago, in a lecture by a linguist whose theory, in my view, did in fact play fast and loose with the low-level facts in order to affirm its version of the high-level generalities. “First let’s lay out the general framework, and then we can flush out the details…â€
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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What is the sense of it? They’re clearly not referring to the commode. The most likely imagery, it seems to me, is of driving out small game from cover. Flushing the details, or the whole plan, out of the underbrush. Another possibility is rinsing away extraneous surface mud to better see the artefact underneath.
In this phase, we drive out the details by mapping processes, identifying key metrics and compiling requirements
http://www.tekcomms.com/sites/tekcomms. … asheet.pdf
Flush out can also mean “to make even”, smooth the ragged edges. And vegetation/youth/spring warmth at its most robust and vigorous is in its full flush. See more efforts to pin flush down in at first brush/blush.
Last edited by burred (2015-07-16 14:20:21)
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