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Chris -- 2025-05-10
Just heard it on the weather channel, Sept 5 ‘07, 11:45 am. ”...with a storm in the offering.”
Offing (naut.): That part of the visible sea distant from shore,beyond anchorage ground, or where there is deep water; hence, distance out at sea; as, we have twenty miles’ offing here. (Funk & Wagnalls)
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and of course, the metaphorical meaning of “offing”—’just out there a little bit away, coming here soon’
No Google hits on “storm in the offering” yet, but I bet they’ll come.
This reminds me of “unchartered waters”
Verbal misuses intrigue me; people say things wrong without meaning to quite; their moouths get tangled up, or the rapid thought processes that they do when they’re talking on their feet confound their intent.
So it’s possible, I believe, for someone to say “offering” withouth meaning to.
Last edited by TootsNYC (2007-09-05 14:56:07)
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I like this one a lot – in part because I hadn’t been aware of the literal meaning of “offing.”
This feels pretty eggcornish to me – “offing” is pretty rare outside of this fixed phrase, and it’s easy to imagine the things predicted as being the offerings of the future, or time, or circumstance.
Like TootsNYC, I’ll be surprised if the hit numbers don’t grow. I expected to find more instances, but this is obviously hard to search for. Here are all the examples of “change is in the offering” I located:
Meteorologists who actually analyze the weather without simply relying on computers are hinting that a pattern change is in the offering for around the 15th given it looksl ike some of the indicies that have been giving us this mild weather (EPO,NAO,AO) may start to flip around.
http://www.canadianweather.org/forums/a … -2583.html
Looks like a change is in the offering. The battle has just begun.
http://www.laceycrawford.com/2005/log2005.html
Whether they like it or not, change is in the offering for the Islamic world.
http://www.tenfingers6strings.com/archives/2005_12.html
Radical industry change is in the offering, and many participants will become extinct.
http://www.yme.nl/thoughts/archive/2004 … chive.html
Or, is he just a victim of the company needing to send a
signal to the investment community that a change is in the offering?
http://groups.google.com/group/wavelet/ … a7c0d508c2
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In September 2007 there were no hits for “storm” and 6 for “change” in the offering. Today there were 14 unique instances of “change is in the offering”, and 8 for-real ghits for “storm is in the offering”. Four for “storm in the offering”. Eggcorn documentation is getting easier.
Last edited by David Bird (2014-01-09 20:07:10)
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