Eggcorn Forum

Me? Why me? I don’t know anything about this. And you’re doing just fine—carry on.

The only thing I can think to add is that this seems to me another example of the phenomenon I’ve dubbed “a Jorkel pair.”

And thanks for leading me to the Wikipedia article on “stone skipping”—I would never have guessed it existed otherwise. I’d always wondered what the game “Ducks and drakes” consisted of. And “skiting” and “skiffing” are new ones on me.

Your Wikipedia link was a cached one, so let me provide a live link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skipping_stones

Well, after saying, “I got nothin!,” I started thinking that “skimming” a stone sounded a little strange to me. Sure, there’s an intransitive use of “skim” in which a stone can “skim across the water.” And there’s a transitive use of “skim” in which you can, say, “skim the fat off milk.” But I wasn’t sure there was a sense of “skim” that meant “to cause something to skip or glide across a surface.” But I was wrong—this sense of “skim” is given in the OED, and in fact the first example given there refers to “skimming” stones:

8. To cause to fly lightly; to throw (a thing, esp. one having a flat surface) so that it maintains an evenness of balance or poise in its flight.
1611 COTGR., Ricochet, the sport of skimming a thinne stone on the water. 1748 RICHARDSON Clarissa (1811) IV. 138, I skimmed my hat after him to make him afraid for something. 1768 Woman of Honor III. 245, I took the guinea, and..the window being open, I skimmed it out. 1816 SCOTT Antiq. xliii, He skimmed his cocked-hat in the air. 1818 {emem} Hrt. Midl. i, Hearing the..voice of the guard as he skimmed forth for my grasp the expected packet. 1887 MARY COWDEN CLARKE Girlhood Shaks. Heroines vii. 174 To skim both bread and trencher to the other end of the hall.

If one of our two options were an eggcornish outgrowth of the other, I would have guessed that “skim” was the newcomer. But again I was wrong. The earliest use of “skip” in this sense isn’t recorded until 70 years after the first such instance of “skim.” Of course, 70 years isn’t a big gap when you’re talking about early sources—there may well be plenty of earlier “skips” lurking out there that just haven’t reached the OED yet. Here’s the relevant “skip” entry:

7. To cause to skip, bound, or jump.
1683 MOXON Mech. Exerc., Printing xxiv. {page}13 He skips his Balls both at once from the first and third Row to the second and fourth Row. 1841 CATLIN N. Amer. Ind. (1844) II. lv. 194 The usual friendly invitation however was given..by skipping several rifle bullets across the river. 1894 H. H. GARDENER Unoff. Pat. 26 He had skipped pebbles on it and waded across it at low tide.

It’s hard to be sure from the evidence that either phrase started as an eggcorn. Both uses are reasonable developments of earlier senses of the two words. Their similarity in sound and meaning may have reinforced both of them, but that’s about as far as the evidence will let me go. I think “skipping stones” and “skimming stones” are a classic Jorkel pair.