Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
In the field of psychiatry, a patient may be described as “perseverating” on a thought. That is, repeating it over and over again. The base word which is intended to capture this notion is “persevere.” So, a psychiatrist might include the term “perseveration” in his notes.
To those not-fully-trained in the field of psychiatry, the notion of repeating something over and over might take on an erroneous interpretation of “preserving” it. From this misunderstanding derives the eggcorn term “preservation” to describe the behavior.
This observation was pointed out to me by a practitioner in the field. I’m not sure how I’d locate any similar instances on the internet.
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For some autistics, favorite perseverations can be part of one’s self-preservation.
Perseverations may also preserve knowledge about topics that might otherwise go neglected, if nobody were obsessed with them.
polyglots of the world, unite ~ we have nothing to lose but our accents!
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