Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
freshers’ week – 304,000 ghits
threshers’ week – 205 ghits
Freshers’ week is the first week of a student’s university/college career and is often characterised, it seems, by excessive drinking and extreme behaviour. I have mentioned before the increasing use of an ‘eff’ sound for a ‘th’ and the consequent difficulties in understanding quite what is meant. Those who habitually sound ‘th’ as ‘eff’ may overcompensate by spelling every ‘f’ as a ‘th’ – much of the time they’ll get it right. In this case, however, the strenuous nature of the week’s initiation may be reflected in the idea of threshing, though thrashing might be nearer the mark. There is an old, and rather rude, folk song about a threshing machine but much as I’d like to think so, today’s youth have not somehow imbibed such cultural fossils. On the other hand, there is a national chain of off-licences supplying booze at much cheaper than pub prices and its name is ‘Threshers’ – could this really be the explanation?
I hope to drop soonish but im moving to university (thats college to u american folks) an there is threshers week (like 4 days of SOLID DRINKING BABY!!). ...
www.kj52.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=4923 … b96d2cb303 – 70k – Supplemental Result – Cached
Hows threshers week coming along for everyone? has been quite drunken for me. _Manwee__ Member of APOC …
soe.lithium.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Chimaera_Euro&message.id=542704 – 105k – Supplemental Result – Cached
... beer and well more beer. gonna get back just in time for threshers week :agree: ... threshers week? Is that where you spend 7 days in the off licence? ...
forum.nwdnb.co.uk/printthread.php?t=21825 – 15k – Supplemental Result – Cached
did you manage to go the whole of threshers week without a hangover? (ie never stopped drinking long enough!) I also got threshers flu but that may just be …
www.edweb.ws/16/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=37&parent=338 – 30k – Supplemental Result – Cached
current personal best was during threshers week (where you gaint the greatest tolerance to alcohol EVER) 3 pints of carlseburg 7 bottles of bud …
forums.narutofan.com/showthread.php?p=6170913 – 38k – Supplemental Result – Cached
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I would assume that this is a deliberate humourous misspelling in most cases. I know that Amateur Transplants actually makes the connection between “Threshers” and “Freshers’” in one of their songs, with the pair of lines “You’ve caught the ‘flu’ from Freshers’, and spent your [student] loan in Threshers…”, so it’s an established joke. I would also find it unlikely that people would mix the two words up, because Freshers’ weeks tend to involve T-shirts and other give-aways with the word “Freshers’” on them.
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While I happily concede that most of the hits are deliberate wordplay, I suspect that a small proportion are not and are the kind of error also referred to in my post, ‘frills for thrills for frills’ (- I should now provide a link, but can’t get it to work…)
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You’re right Peter. A key aspect to eggcorns is the old saying: “Nothing is obvious to the uninformed.” No matter how obvious something is to the majority of people, there always seems to be an uninformed few with enough creativity to generate these eggcorns.
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