Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I found this today:
“Police honed in on Wilson on Saturday, after his former girlfriend called the police [....] ” (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ … TE=DEFAULT)
I’m pretty sure – no, I’m certain – they meant “homed in on”, in the sense of a homing pigeon (sense 4 below).
Main Entry: home
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): homed; hom·ing
Date: 1765
intransitive verb
1: to go or return home
2 of an animal : to return accurately to one’s home or natal area from a distance
3: to proceed to or toward a source of radiated energy used as a guide <missiles home in on radar>
4: to proceed or direct attention toward an objective
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Welcome to the forum, PaulM! This classic eggcorn is in the Database here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/48/hone/
The Database article also gives links to various Language Log discussions of “hone in on,” and the second Mark Liberman post is esp. useful—he argues that the history of these two phrases is murkier than it appears at first. He also suggests (in a point he’s come back to repeatedly) that new phrases and their eggcorns often arise almost simultaneously.
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