Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
Seen in a message on a FreeCycle mailing list:
“My kiddos are chopping at the bit to use the new center
in my daycare…”
Here’s the message in Yahoo Groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freecycle … ssage/2357
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A lot has been written on this eggcorn and related ones. The following is a brief tour of some of the more relevant links. There are others, too.
I wrote on “chopping at the bit” in a post that’s now hard to access unless you know it’s there:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=301
Peter Forster posted on “jumping at the bit” here:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?pid=2482
The Eggcorn Database actually considers “chomp at the bit” an eggcorn in its own right (for “champ at the bit”). And two of the comments to that article discuss other variants, “chaff” and “chafe at the bit”:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/26 … t-the-bit/
Finally, Arnold Zwicky’s lengthy Language Log post on “chomp at the bit”—which helped start all of this—is here:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language … 02018.html
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The off-the-bitten track tour would include the following simblings, in decreasing order of endemism. As Pat pointed out in one of the links above, chomping at the bit has eclipsed champing, as seen in the ngram. Eagerness is evident not only in racehorses, but also hungry trout, that are chomping at the bait.
However, if Shea Weber becomes available at any point i’d be chomping at the bait to see him in a spoked-b sweater.
Hockey board
Eleven genuine hits on Google today. The next one is a googledeuce, and the last two, legomenonces. If you are chomping at the beat, your jaws and salivary squirtiture are already moving in rhythmic anticipation.
The election is still 18 months away but the press is already chomping at the beat for a fight.
Political blog
The Kentucky Public Service Commission is chomping at the beat to get media coverage
Blog
It seems rather self-evident that if you poll such a huge bunch more Democrats than Republicans about a Republican policy, you’re going to get a lobsidedly negative response. {...} Promote his top manager, Flash Groton, who was actually in charge of the project and has been champing at the bait to send it to production
Polling advice
I was by now ‘ champion at the bit ’ to get and see the birds.
Pigeon fancy
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“Chomping at the bait” is creely funny.
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