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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2007-10-15 17:46:10

JonW719
Eggcornista
From: Colorado
Registered: 2007-09-05
Posts: 285

a knife for a knife

Hey there, Blandford…

Cool find.

I don’t know for sure (I defer to my eggcorn elders here), but this sure seems to be eggcorn material. The image and meaning are there (a knife for a knife makes perfect metaphorical sense). I just don’t know how widespread this understanding of the phrase might be.


Feeling quite combobulated.

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#2 2013-12-30 10:49:50

burred
Eggcornista
From: Montreal
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 1112

Re: a knife for a knife

Blandford seems to have flown the coop. I’m guessing that he had submitted “a knife for a knife << an eye for an eye”. Good one, that turns the equal exchange of body parts into equal measures, or weapons, of retribution.

I have talked with some black and Asian inmates serving time in prison for such [non-white-on-white] crimes; most [attempt to] justify their actions as collective retribution for attacks on “their people”. A knife for a knife, they think, will make for a better world.
Politics blog

“A tooth for a tooth, a knife for a knife”, what goes around comes around
Reggae culture

I only found these two hits, so it’s not clear that it is not intentional.

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#3 2013-12-30 12:24:40

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: a knife for a knife

Yes, a beauty.

Blandford left and took all his posts with him. Curious.

I can still recover most of his posts through the Wayback Machine. But this particular post seems to have been missed by the Internet Archive.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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