Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Seen in several places;
http://blog.clickz.com/070619-160641.html – “Sony Pictures Television is airing paired-down versions of its classic shows on MySpace.”
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showpost … stcount=2: – “I think those versions have been paired down a bit.”
http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp … id=1105175 – “ASTM has paired down their analysts list finally.”
The phrase does appear to have a legitimate use, when referring to DNA base pairs: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 … -down.html
A valid eggcorn?
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Welcome to the Eggcorn website kilinrax. What you suggest might be an eggcorn if we could come up with valid imagery for “paired down” ...otherwise it’s liable to be just a malapropism.
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I was just chasing this one a bit and didn’t find all that many valid hits for “paired down.”
However, I found lots and lots of hits for “pared up”. As in:
“The food is always fantastic and pared up with some really great wines. ” http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-restaurant- … vettsville
“She is pared up with Snyder, a very young detective who likes to drive the boats at top speed. “http://www.booksnbytes.com/reviews/brandt_darkwaterdive2.html
” At the Clean Tech Open the next big green idea is pared up with investors and labs.”
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?sectio … id=6117189
I tried to pick some examples here where the writer seems to have otherwise decent spelling… I suspect the error comes from association with the “pared down” idiom. I dont’ see many hits for “pared with” alone. (Except for several where the preceding com- is on a previous line.) I have trouble coming up with imagery to suit, though, so I’m not sure it’s a real eggcorn as opposed to just confusion…
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jorkel wrote:
What you suggest might be an eggcorn if we could come up with valid imagery for “paired down” ...otherwise it’s liable to be just a malapropism.
If you’re cutting something in half, yielding a pair of pieces, that could fill the bill, even if you keep cutting the smaller pieces in half, changing unities into pairs with a “pairing knife”.
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