Eggcorn Forum

sabotage – 12,700,000 ghits
sapotage – 478 ghits

The word ‘sabotage’ changes its nature once you realise it comes from oppressed factory workers in France chucking their wooden shoes into the mechanical contrivances of the industrial revolution in order to draw a breath and stop sweating, briefly. Well, for me it does, at any rate.
Quite how anyone can hear that ‘b’ as a ‘p’ escapes me, but certainly some do, and strangely enough to ‘sap’ can mean to to weaken or destroy, or undermine – hence ‘sapotage’. Whether anyone really has that image in mind I don’t know, but pee and bee are a fair distance apart on my keyboard so a typo doesn’t seem particularly likely…
(Incidentally, most of these citations are German, or Dutch, (shamefully, I cannot distinguish between them), from which we gather that wooden shoes may have a ‘p’ rather than a ‘b’ in the middle and that few English users are making this particular error…)

Not, an evil clown alwys tries to sapotage what you’re doing. You’re a tightrope walker at one time, another time you have to jump out from a pole and land …
forums.abandonware-france.org/printthread.php?t=15843 – 5k – Supplemental Result Cached

She will end up fighting lana over who gets clark/superman, and lana will do anything to sapotage all of clarks relationships, but lois will try to get the …
kryptonsite.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2140501 – 31k – Supplemental Result – Cached –

I can only tell you as frankly as I can – and as a real friend, that you shouldn`t sapotage your own intentions of a good trimaran by being too lazy to …
www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5101037/mpage_4/tm.htm – 221k – Cached

Will Eggman try to sapotage all their plans? Why am I asking questions? ... Will Eggman try to sapotage all their plans? Why am I asking questions? ...
4kids.tv/forum/showthread.php?t=171557 – 79k – Supplemental Result – Cached -

Last edited by Peter Forster (2007-03-31 12:28:29)