Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I’ve heard this many many times.
-eD
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A very common error, sure. I tend to write “presumedly” for “presumably” and “supposably” for “supposedly”.
But it’s not an eggcorn (see the About page).
What’s at issue here is the range of suffixes English has for making adverbs from verbs, via adjectives. You start with the verb “suppose”. Then you have the suffixes ”-ive”, ”-able”, ”-ed”, and a few more to form an adjective from it, to which you append ”-ly” for the adverb. That “supposively” and “supposably” are wrong, or at least non-standard, is just bad luck. They aren’t any less logical than “supposedly”.
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“The crucial element is that the new form makes sense: for anyone except lexicographers or other people trained in etymology, more sense than the original form in many cases.”
sometimes the correct word is “supposedly”, but the speaker might be really feeling that the thing “could be supposed” (ie: supposably).
polyglots of the world, unite ~ we have nothing to lose but our accents!
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