Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
A girl I work with thought the weather was “disconcerning.” I asked for clarification, in case I misunderstood her. Without being too pedantic ( she realized her error by the following day), I was piqued by this usage.
A quick Google search turned up 12,900 results for disconcerning. I saw plenty of posts on message boards that were intended to use disconcerting, but I couldn’t figure out a few that referred to “disconcerning tastes” or “disconcerning traveller.” Eventually, I realized these were supposed to be discerning.
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Disconcerning is not a “real” word, but the construction makes sense if you don’t understand “disconcerting”, which means “to cause an emotional disturbance”. The context of both is used to convey a state of “concern”, as the following examples of “disconcerning” show:
As disconcerning as it is to lose a game like this, and to be 12 games off the pace from last year, you know the Pistons will be ready come April. ...
forums-beta.sportingnews.com/topic.php?p=1591706 – 46k –
It’s rather disconcerning to know that it’s costing U-View the same amount to rent this VCR to you whether you use it or not (IE, nothing: these VCRs have …
www.finnie.org/text/u-view.html – 6k
That’s because the product is good, but not to have updates to current problems is a little disconcerning to me. I remember when you guy’s actually released …
forums.ceruleanstudios.com/showthread.php?t=84482&page=8 – 190k –
These people are cleary concerned.
The fact that adding “dis” to a word is normally done to modify it to mean “the opposite of”, as in “disadvantage”, “disrespect”, etc., does nothing to stop us from making our eggcorns. “Dis” is also in words like “disturb” and “disaster” and by God those are situations of concern, right? Although, as an eggcorn amatuer, it appears to me to follow the classic eggcorn model (rare word substituted with common, similar-meaning/imagery, used in same context), I would like to ask you eggcornista folks for some guidance here….any thoughts?
Last edited by booboo (2007-06-25 22:10:08)
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Booboo’s analysis is right on the mark.
And now, on a completely unrelated note… If you make a mistake with your post, you can always click on “edit” and go in and change it. And, if you wish to consolidate the information of a couple postings, you can always click on “delete” to remove a superfluous one when done. The only thing that can’t be changed is the title of the thread—unless you contact the site administrator (Pat).
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Thanks, jorkel. I edited and deleted to fix my mistakes. You’re kind to offer your guidance.
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