Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
“Vaunted” means “boasted of,” “widely praised.” It’s not a common word and is most familiar from certain phrases like “vaunted opinion”; as a result it’s vulnerable to reshaping. I’m not completely sure “vaulted opinion” is an eggcorn. I can make an argument for it: we think of architectural “vaulting” as something rather elaborate and formal, and likely to be found in the sorts of buildings associated with government and authority. But one might also argue that people who confuse “vaunted” with “vaulted” are unlikely to have much of an acquaintance with either word. I’ve put it done here in “Slips” because I can’t quite convince myself of the phrases’s eggcornicity. In any case, there were about 90 raw hits for “vaulted opinion” and 2600 for “much vaulted.” Examples:
Therefore, I think it perfectly acceptable to utilize it in any attempt to describe the human condition or situation and as a means of humbling our often vaulted opinion of our rational capacities.
http://alienson.wordpress.com/2007/05/1 … ets-right/
His vaulted opinion, featured bimonthly in the pages of Wine Advocate, can make or break a winery.
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyro … id%3A14984
Oh for Goodness sakes, Gimmie a Break, you really DO need to go back to school. I think I’ll take the Discovery Channel and History Channel over your vaulted opinion, thank you.
http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denv … oards.html
[Note: the Chicago Manual of Style still recommends using only city name and not publisher name in both footnote and bibliography entries. This is a sign of madness, especially given the dispersal of publishers: city name alone offers little to no information that can be used to identify the publisher. Ignore the much-vaulted Manual on this point. They are just plain wrong.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: … 7_August_3
Then I saw this article. I didn’t realize there were still races ongoing, so I started skimming it. This is beautiful!
“In the Columbus, Ohio-area, elections officials are delaying the count of more than 9,000 provisional ballots by one day so it doesn’t disrupt the much-vaulted Ohio State-Michigan football game on Nov. 18.”
Much vaulted? I know that “vaunt” means “boast about or praise.” Is it a “much-vaunted” game? For the descriptivists out there (L), “much vaulted” has 2,160 Google hits. “Much-vaunted” had over 600,000.
http://wayla.blogspot.com/2006/11/what- … ed-to.html
Last edited by patschwieterman (2007-09-08 03:28:31)
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Pat, I suspect it is an eggcorn; I googled “much vaulted”, as ‘vaunted’ rarely appears in public without ‘much’, and encountered 2,380 hits. The imagery is more of athletic types leapfrogging gymnastic equipment – ‘much-vaulted’ suggesting something to do with pride or prowess or, perhaps, something hackneyed by repetition and hype?
Overdue reissue of the much vaulted fourth album, originally released in 1980. Featuring bonus tracks from rare non album singles. How I Wrote Elastic Man, ...
www.chooseyouritem.com/music/Rock/Fall/ … PORT_.html – 24k – Cached
Made me wonder just where the line is, and whether our much-vaulted ability to deal with abstract concepts is purely instinctive, and conditonal on the …
www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=49175 – 117k – Cached
At the $2000 level, you can try out the much-vaulted Petrus (French) at … The food is (I think) better than some of those much vaulted 5-star restaurants. ...
forum.paragon.com.hk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=5508&sid=02624cf7c90bcdb8955837a0942c9aed – 78k – Cached
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Ha! Peter, after doing my initial post, I went out looking for examples of “much vaulted” and by the time I posted the edit, you’d beaten me to the punch by 13 minutes. (You’re up early in England; I’m up late in California.)
I think the athletic interpretation is possible, but I just couldn’t find much indication that people were thinking in that way. (Well, except for people making fun of the people writing “much vaulted.”) But hey, I’d be happy to consider my own find a true eggcorn rather than a malaprop. (You and I both tend to question our own finds; I think I found your “backclash” rather more convincing than you did.)
And I’m pleased as punch that your first example is taken from a discussion of an album by The Fall, one of my favorite rock bands.
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Bizarrely, the fourth citation I posted above is actually two citations that our software is insisting on mashing together. The link listed doesn’t actually go with the cite preceding it. I don’t know why this is happening—probably a string of wacky code in the WP doc—but I’ll try posting them again. Here’s the first one:
[Note: the Chicago Manual of Style still recommends using only city name and not publisher name in both footnote and bibliography entries. This is a sign of madness, especially given the dispersal of publishers: city name alone offers little to no information that can be used to identify the publisher. Ignore the much-vaulted Manual on this point. They are just plain wrong.]
[This was taken from a PDF on proper footnote form at the MIT University website: Last edited by patschwieterman (2007-09-08 04:24:54)
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Curiouser and curiouser. I can’t get the two citations to appear separately unless I put them in different posts. Here’s the second:
[Question at the Wikipedia help desk:] I’ve been searching for a good definition on the common usage of the term “much vaulted” but since I cannot find that anywhere, I’d like someone to create just such a page on Wikipedia – how do I go about making such a request? —Preceding unsigned comment added by AllanHjensen (talk • contribs)
[Answer:] You’re probably thinking of “much vaunted” which appears in a few Wikipedia articles. There is already a definition here: Wiktionary:Vaunt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: … 7_August_3
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The first notion that came to my mind was that of a pole-vaulter, so an utterer might relate “vaulted” to the elevated position of a pole-vaulter …artificial and vulnerable. It perhaps even draws on the parallel image of a person on stilts being “stilted.”
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Definite eggcorn, and a nice catch
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will buy a ridiculous hat – Scott Adams (author of Dilbert)
Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life – Terry Pratchett
http://blog.meteorit.co.uk
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“I’m with you fellas” ( a little movie quote, there (Oh, brother, where art thou)).
I’m going with the architechtual imagery, though. Vaulted ceiling is synonymous with “high and lofty” – as would be someone’s status whose opinion is highly respected. Plus, “vaulted”, I believe, is much more frequently heard than “vaunted”.
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There’s also “From the vaults”, which generally means something from an archive or store and has much more of an underground connotation. It’s interesting that vault has acquired two rather opposing meanings as a result of its original meaning – an architectural feature – being found above and below the feet.
Still think ‘much vaulted’ is probably influenced more from above, though.
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patschwieterman wrote:
“Vaunted” means “boasted of,” “widely praised.” It’s not a common word and is most familiar from certain phrases like “vaunted opinion”; as a result it’s vulnerable to reshaping. I’m not completely sure “vaulted opinion” is an eggcorn. I can make an argument for it: we think of architectural “vaulting” as something rather elaborate and formal, and likely to be found in the sorts of buildings associated with government and authority. But one might also argue that people who confuse “vaunted” with “vaulted” are unlikely to have much of an acquaintance with either word. I’ve put it done here in “Slips” because I can’t quite convince myself of the phrases’s eggcornicity.
I resurrected this one from nearly three years ago because I just encountered this eggcorn for the first time: ”...they have been vaulted as masters of audio collage, when, in fact to my ears, they are but one of many…” (from a music chatlist, 9/3/08).
I refer to it as an eggcorn, with all due respect to the misgivings of pat who is an expert on the subject, because his or her objection that ”...people who confuse ‘vaunted’ with ‘vaulted’ are unlikely to have much of an acquaintance with either word” doesn’t seem necessarily true to me, and also because I think that many accepted eggcorns are probably made by people who aren’t well-acquainted with one or both of the words involved.
And I can’t resist posting items that are new to me even if they’ve been mentioned here before.
Dixon
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Another varation:
long vaulted or long-vaulted for long-vaunted… this one really makes it sound Olympic, doesn’t it?
From a newspaper discussion forum:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/c … 0I.DTL&o=2
“Line 7 on the long vaulted form would ask where you were born including what Foriegn country.”
From a video-game review:
http://www.ex.org/articles/2001/2001.12 … snk_2.html
“But the highlight of CAPCOM VS. SNK 2 has to be the 48 fighters from Capcom and SNK’s long-vaulted history.”
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I heard vaulted for vaunted on the radio yesterday. I interpreted it as meaning ‘projected or launched into the sky,’ though the idea that it might be a valued, gold standard that is kept in a vault is also conceivable.
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