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Chris -- 2018-04-11
This is pretty funny, I’ve never heard it before today until a family member said it. Google shows 750 hits. The imagery in the mind of the user is that of a ram rummaging through an area.
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I’m not sure that the image evoked isn’t something closer to the term “ramraid”, in which a (frequently modified) vehicle, is driven at speed into a shop front, for the purposes of burglary….
Pesky kids.
Cheers!
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Yeah, it’s hard to say for sure what’s in the mind of every user but the example given came with the imagery noted. After I stopped laughing at the initial statement I had to admit that the eggcorn (if I may be so presumptuous) evoked an image of a ram in my mind, too, and he was like a “bull in a china shop”. That’s not to say other imagery may be being employed as well. Another term that may also be somewhat connected could be “ramrod”. I was hoping one of you eggcornista types would give us your take on it.
Thanks!
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‘Sack’ on its own means ‘plunder’, and with the addition of ‘ram’ with its violent, impetuous connotations – ramrod, battering-ram, rampage etc – this eggcornish variant is a more potent image than the original. What we don’t know is whether those using it have that imagery in mind, but its usage is widespread and there are far unlikelier candidates already in the database. I couldn’t resist some examples…
The trees made it awfie easy for craws tae come doon and jist ramsack a new sown field. The scabby black skeelipers wid jist come doon and devour everything …
www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone/kist/search/ … srob02.dat – 14k – Cached
I know you feelin these, I ramsack yo facilities Im ill at ease, with these mcs, who aint got no abilities (get at me) I make mcs, run out like batteries …
lyricstrue.net/bandsongtext/Tash/Blackula.html – 11k – Cached
The balwarts of injustice of the NTEU syndicates in the border patrol arm will ramsack my vehicle and destroy my personals. The Candadians open their gate. ...
www.angelfire.com/zine2/democracyordeat … Notes.html – 246k – Cached
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You two were doing just fine with the imagery assessment. The imagery which first came to my mind was that of ramming a door to sack a room. It’s hard to tell whether any of the utterers have this imagery in mind, though. Booboo clearly has a firsthand account of animal (ram) imagery. I have included other examples below which do not give any particular contextual clues—except possibly to eliminate the imagery that I suggested.
Here are the Google counts for June 3, 2007:
437,000 ransack
631 ramsack—some eggcorns, some intentional alterations.
Reasonably good numbers. And, there may have been even more if it were not for spellchecker fixing the mistake before it would ever reach us.
In addition to the role that “ramrod” might play, I would also point out “ramshackle” which almost rhymes with “ramsack.” Since I’m big on subliminal word transfer, this just sends it over the top for me.
Japan Today – News – Arabs leaders endorse peace proposal with IsraelI don’t ever remember anything about the Iraqis asking us to invade Iraq and kill their leader, ramsack their museums, steal their oil or redo their …
www.japantoday.com/jp/news/402214 – 50k – Cached – Similar pages
Comments on: Being held accountableAnd freind and I decided to ramsack Mrs. Doolies Class while she was out. We threw everything in the floor wrote all over the chalk board, and stopped up …
bainbridgega.com/talkwp/?feed=rss2&p=194 – 5k – Cached – Similar pages
Iraq: Scarcity of Winesses for Saddam’s Trial? – Southern Maryland …He’s the guy who did not invade and ramsack a neighbor nation. He’s not the one who attacked another neighbor with long range missiles. ...
forums.somd.com/archive/index.php/t-29509.html – 13k – Cached – Similar pages
The Official Ozomatli Site – Online JournalSo I ramsack the house looking for it for about 20 minutes, and I find it!! I bring it back to my son, and hug him, convincing him to, ”...come on back, ...
www.clearlynot.com/ – 11k – Cached – Similar pages
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I decided to give this a second shot…
It seems that the past tense is far more prevalent…
Google hits on June 3, 2007:
1,380,000 ransacked
4370 ramsacked—some eggcorns.
I even got over 100 Google hits by including “ram” with “ramsacked” in the same search …which located this:
BS: Your OpinionTheir locked gate had been destroyed by an armored truck,their front door had been destroyed by a battering ram,their house had been ramsacked and all their …
www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=41709 – 36k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
and this one for “ramsacking”...
OPERA-L archives—February 2005, week 3 (#72)... as a battering ram crashing through the temple’s gates; another impressive visual trick is the burning of the sacred scrolls during the ramsacking of …
listserv.cuny.edu/Scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0502c&L=opera-l&T=0&P=7758 – 17k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
Last edited by jorkel (2007-06-03 07:31:17)
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Wow. Thanks for the good investigation, guys! Ya’ll make a much better case than I do. I never thought about it, but Peter’s right- ramshack a is more potent image than the original. And thank you, Jorkel, for looking into it from another angle and finding so many examples. I hope it makes it to the eggcorn list. The study of the word formulation and the imagery speculation has been very entertaining! I like that “subliminal word transfer” postulation. The study of how these eggcorns evolve and the mental machinations involved is fascinating.
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I heartily second the comment on “subliminal word transfer”—a great phrase.
And I love the range of English covered in Peter’s examples. We don’t get to see Scots nearly often enough. But the word that caught my eye was “balwart” in the last of Peter’s three examples. I eventually realized that “balwarts of injustice” had to be “bulwarks of injustice.” I’m a bit puzzled as to how “bulwark” turned into “balwart,” but I found a couple of other examples:
Part of me argues hotly that I need to stand firm
a strong balwart against the tides of your own insecurities
http://memorylanessaddiction.blogspot.c … chive.html
With this, Spain became the balwart of Catholicism in Europe, the spearhead of the Counter-Reformation.
http://www.museosanfrancisco.cl/history.htm
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Heard on the radio this morning: “the students ramshacked the building,” in an interview about the Iran hostage crisis at the US embassy 30 years ago. A none-too-subtle connection is made to force and to damages.
Pat, might the subliminal word transfer to balwart be from stalwart.
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Turns out the link to “ramshackle” might be more than merely subliminal. Here’s a an excerpt from a quotation in the Orlando Sentinel:
They were still aware of the urgency to give the boy the medicine, though, and ramshackled the place looking for a dime.
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/200 … si-silas/2
There are about a dozen more for “ramshackled the place” and presumably dozens more for this use of ramshackle in general. It fits—once you’ve ransacked a place, you’ve made it look a little more ramshackle.
David—yes, nice, that works well.
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Yes, ramshackle is good. Even though I mentioned it in my earlier post on this thread, we never thought to consider that it might serve as a reshaping by itself… though, I wonder which category.
And by the way…
with all these good old posts resurfacing lately, I kinda wish the content were in the Database already.
Last edited by jorkel (2010-01-27 12:55:30)
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Pat wrote:
I’m a bit puzzled as to how “bulwark†turned into “balwart,†but I found a couple of other examples:
Baluarte is the Spanish word for a bulwark or defensive fortification. Is there something similar in French? Anyhow, we might be dealing with cross-language influence here. Besides or instead of influence from stalwart .
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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David Tuggy wrote:
Baluarte is the Spanish word for a bulwark or defensive fortification. Is there something similar in French? Anyhow, we might be dealing with cross-language influence here. Besides or instead of influence from stalwart .
Bingo! You nailed that one, Dr. Tuggy. The first of my two “balwart” quotations remains a mystery—it’s a line of a poem written by a woman in Belleville, Illinois; though she occasionally takes “poetic license,” her work looks like that of a native speaker to me. The second citation is a different story, however. It turns out that my quotation is from the English language version of the website of a museum in Santiago, Chile. For the sake of comparison, I offer first the English version and then the same line from the Spanish version:
With this, Spain became the balwart of Catholicism in Europe, the spearhead of the Counter-Reformation.
http://www.museosanfrancisco.cl/history.htm
España se transforma en baluarte del catolicismo en Europa y en cabeza de la Contrarreforma.
http://www.museosanfrancisco.cl/historia.htm
Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-01-28 00:56:59)
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A couple more examples:
All of us ‘Bernie Bros’ ram sacked the place and WWE everybody…. It was like a royal rumble…LOL….
facetious comment
Warning as thieves ramsack six homes…
...Some heartbroken families came home as early as 4pm to find their homes had been ramsacked.
newspaper article
Most dictionaries won’t touch “ramsack”, but Merriam-Webster calls it a variation of “ransack”, and the online slang dictionary Definithing gives a range of meanings that may lend themselves to various different analyses:
Ramsack
to f*ck tha brains out of a f*ckable girl
yesterday i ramsacked tha sh*t out of becky…
-f*ckin’ sh*t up
-walking in like you own the place
-being violent
“i’m gonna ramsack the sh*t out of youâ€
to ramsack is to run very fast then when approaching your target go to one knee and hit them in the groin.
also: ramsacked, ramsacking
neil: yeah, zach was being a douche so i ramsacked his mother.
or
mike: you’re sure p*ss*ng me off. do you want me to ramsack you?
slang dictionary
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