Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Google hits on Aug. 17, 2007
46,500 “ravishing beauty”
23,300 “raving beauty”
Analysis by Joe Krozel
“Ravishing,” per se, means “unusually attractive, pleasing or striking.”
The more familiar definition of “raving” is “talking wildly or irrationally.” But, the other definition of “raving” is, simply, “ravishing.” (I wonder if this was an eggcorn of old?)
Hmmmm… Perhaps some people believe a “raving beauty” is a beauty that people rave about! (So, how exactly would one classify this alternate imagery?)
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I think you found a good one here, Joe. I don’t know if it’s of any help, but the following is a definition of “raven”- shiny black: of a deep lustrous black. So, someone could be a “raven beauty”, which I think I’ve actually heard but it’s been quite a while. I’ve heard it used to describe beautiful black hair, too. Anyway, what do you think? Could it be blending in somehow, in the background?
Oh, here’s an example.
Anyway it seems like Brad like them blonde, wonder why he dates the very raven beauty Angelina Jolie! Maybe that she used to be a very very blonde little …
dailyblabber.ivillage.com/entertainment/archives/2007/06/remember_when_brad_pitt_dated.html – 56k
by Vincent Joseph Monteleone – 2003 – Language Arts & Disciplines
RAVEN BEAUTY (N) A beautiful negress. RAW HIDE (N) A hard worker; a severe task master. READER (N) A prescription; a warrant for arrest; a wanted man; ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=1584773006
The right hair colour can turn a simple and ordinary looking girl to a gorgeous red or a beautiful blonde or classy raven beauty. ...
beauty.indianetzone.com/1/colour_your_hair.htm – 19k
There were only 767 hits for this, and only about a tenth of these were legit; the others were about beauty products and a movie.
Anyhoo…could this be one of those subliminal eggcorns? A mental slurry of some sort, combining ravishing/raving/raven? I agree, as you point out, perhaps they all qualify as beauty to rave about! Or even, perhaps “raving” could be being used in the sense of “extreme, intense, overt,etc” as in “raving psycho” or “raving homosexual” (4000+ hits for each) or better still, “raving lunatic” (185k). I personally believe you’re onto an eggcorn here, so I hope all this speculation doesn’t make it harder to make a case for it. Can you sift through all this and extract some wisdom? If not for eggcornology, at least for me- I feel like I’ve set off an eggcorn I.E.D. here! It was easy to come up with a lot of this info, but now I’m at a loss as to what to do with it.
Must stop now. take brain to where sleep are
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I think the “raven” eggcorn is already in the database… I probably should have mentioned that in my initial post.
As for the usages of “raving,” they’re all standard so they wouldn’t qualify as eggcorns. I was just wondering if this has always been the case or whether “raving” (defined as “ravishing”) has an eggcorn history to it. This might require a trip to the OED or other sources.
Last edited by jorkel (2007-08-18 18:29:22)
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