Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I started to hear this so much at one point that i thought i was wrong with ‘dandruff’
as the 558 hits on google show,are still a few flaky-scalped individuals who believe their condition is linked to a gentle breeze.
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Welcome to the Forum, Gib!
I googled “dandruft”—762 hits, but it seems less potentially eggcornish.
Your post also made me wonder what the etymology of “dandruff” is. I’m still wondering—the OED will only say that the origin is unknown and that no satisfactory suggestions have been made. But what surprised me most about the OED entry was the definition offered for “dandruff”:
Dead scarf-skin separating in small scales and entangled in the hair; scurf.
Don’t you love it when a dictionary defines a common word with an obscure one? Turns out that “scarf-skin” means “epidermis.” Try that one out the next time you go to the doctor’s….
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Thanks, love the forum
My mum who is 80 calls it scurf so that’s not at all obscure to me! “Mum me head’s itchy.” Mum inspects head; “You have just got a bit of scurf, that’s all”
I dismissed ‘dandruft’ as a half-way there corruption but it still gets a few google hits.
I will see what i can find for the etymology of dandruff and let you know.
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Yeah, I immediately thought of “scurf,” too. It turns out, however, that the people at the OED derive “scarf-skin” and “scurf” from entirely different roots; they see “scarf-skin” as related to the word “scarf”—as in the article of clothing. But they do concede that there’s a bit of uncertainty about the roots of both words.
“Dandruft” is actually a bit more prevalent on the web than “dandraft,” and that makes me wonder why. We usually find that eggcornish constructions get more hits than mere malapropisms, so I’m wondering whether the users of “dandruft” are seeing in the term a meaning we aren’t. But maybe it’s simply the retention of the same vowel that makes “dandruft” more popular.
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“dandruff: The word ‘dandruff’ (or ‘dandriff’) as it commonly used to be) first appears, out of the blue, in the mid 16th century, with no known relatives. Its first element, ‘dand-’, remains utterly obscure, but the second part may have been borrowed from Old Norse ‘hrufa’ or Middle Low German ‘rove’ [with a ~ over the ‘o’], both meaning ‘scab’ (Middle English had a word ‘roufe’ – ‘scab, scurf,’ and modern Dutch had ‘roof’).”
from John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins, sorry for all the ’s, i couldn’t work out how to do italics!
Interestingly, ‘draft/draught’ echoes the Dutch ‘roof’ with the connection (to the ear, at least) being a sense of ‘rough’:
“draft: c.1500, spelling variant of draught (q.v.) to reflect change in pronunciation. Meaning “rough copy of a writing” (something “drawn”) is attested from 14c.; that of “preliminary sketch from which a final copy is made” is from 1528. The meaning “to draw off a group for special duty” is from 1703, in U.S. especially of military service; the v. in this sense first recorded 1714. Draftee is from 1866. Sense in bank draft is from 1745.”
from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?sea … hmode=none
So perhaps the people who say dandraft are somehow reflecting some alternate flaky Anglo Saxon folk memory of rough scabbiness, where draft stands in for ruff/rough/hruf/roof? Maybe it’s the other way round and dandruff was the eggcorn of its day. If dandriff was really the original then possibly dandruff, dandraft and dandruft have all been eggcorns at some point. It’s enuff to make you scratch your head.
Did i really spend that much of my life researching scurf?
Last edited by gib (2007-05-03 17:13:05)
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patschwieterman wrote:
Yeah, I immediately thought of “scurf,” too. It turns out, however, that the people at the OED derive “scarf-skin” and “scurf” from entirely different roots; they see “scarf-skin” as related to the word “scarf”—as in the article of clothing. But they do concede that there’s a bit of uncertainty about the roots of both words.
I think scarf means a rough piece of cloth, originally woven from rushes,
rush: a spiky, shaggy, hairy, fast-growing plant, the sort of thing you might hit a golf ball into.
A general sense of untrimmed/uncut (Terry Waite’s allotment anyone?) is also there in rough and riff.
I will leave dand- to someone else but just as a starter, Ayto defines ‘dandy’ as ‘affectedly trim or neat’. And ‘dandelion’ could be incisive.
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Thanks for the citations from Ayto. Wish I owned a copy of that.
If you want to know how to do more formatting (italics, boldface, etc.), here’s a brief post with the basics:
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This probably isn’t any help, but today I happened to come across the proverb, “The still sow eats up all the draff” with a note underneath explaining that ‘draff’ means ‘scraps’. ‘Dander’ is the animal equivalent of dandruff – I’ve no idea which came first – but ‘dander-draff’, scraps of animal skin, feather etc seems an interesting coincidence. ( The variant ‘dandraff’ has 988 ghits!)
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Continuing this thread: dandrift, dandrifts, dandroof, dandrough. These yield 1180, 1, 130, and at least 20 ughits, respectively.
yahoo answers Recently i have white stuff falling from my head/hair when i scratch it. My mom says its dandrift and to wash my hair good.
horse grooming
Veruca has alot of white, flaky dandrift…is this common during the winter?
Personal profile
Favourite Eye Color: Dont madda
Favourite Hair Color: dont madda
Short or Long Hair: dont madda, juss make sure u aint got dandrifts
Baby forum question: What is cradle cap?
Think of it like dandroof just a baby version.
Yahoo answers I have oily hair that gives me dandroughy things. What shampoo will help? it’s not dandrough though…
Hoohoo! Dandroof. I’m going to adopt that one. It seems most likely from dialects where the double-o in “roof” is pronounced as in “book” (I can see the advantage of having a system for describing pronunciation that doesn’t depend on your own. I’ll have to learn to use that)
See also That gets my dandruff up in the Database
Last edited by burred (2009-04-03 07:29:36)
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