Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
An ice floe is a large chunk or layer of floating sea ice. Since ice both flows and floats, I’d assumed that ‘floe’ shared its ancestry with one of those 2 words. In fact, or at least according to my dictionary, it’s from Old Norse and unrelated to either. So this one escapes the eggcorn-cancellling phenomenon of shared derivation. Examples:
According to ice shelf thickness, the main ice flows are restricted to the eastem and western parts of the sea.
books.google.com/books?isbn=3540679650
Sure, Polar Bears rest on ice flows…
www.newsbusters.org/.../noel-sheppard/2 … ore-histor
As summer arrives in this area, the ice flows recede so that by the end of May we can gain access by sea …
www.responsibletravel.com/Trip/Trip900948.htm
Orca’s prey on polar bears during their open sea migration between ice flows.
www-personal.umich.edu/~ahrensk/arcticwildlife.html
We went to the sea at Mombetsu to see the ice flows and the seals. Lucky us we got to see both in their natural habitat! www.pjandbeth.com/v-web/portal/78/modul … cle&sid=80
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Good find, though there are already some figures of speech in the database involving flow/floe. Another one wouldn’t hurt.
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There are also examples of people mistakenly using “lava floe” instead of “lava flow.”
Mt. St. Helens newspaper headline: “Molten Rock Rebuilds Lava Floe in Volcano”
Parks website “One of the truly unique features of this trail is actually walking on top of the toe of a lava floe created about 10,000 years ago…”
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Ken didn’t pursue his chain of thought to ice float, so I’ve added it here.
It is one of a group of nine to have plunged into the ocean after the ice float they lived on melted.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/AZBlue
In non-rhotic India, a thoughtful editor has perhaps made a correction to ice floors.
Walruses feed on clams and other bottom-dwelling creatures in the shallower waters along the coasts and usually rest on ice floors between meals.
Times of India
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