Eggcorn Forum

I just read the abstract of a doctoral dissertation to be defended at an East Coast university in the next couple of weeks. The abstract included a sentence to the effect of “Student unrest in colleges and universities can be traced to mid evil Europe.”

First I laughed. Then I considered writing the author in order to save him some embarassment. Then I simply deleted the email containing the abstract. Then I realized that this had potential to serve as a case of “found in the wild” on the eggcorn database. Damn. With encouragment from others, I can try to track that abstract down in order to make amends for my hasty, habitual email deletion.

Any thoughts? Is this a simple case of over-reliance on spell check? Or, might the medieval period be characterized as occurring somewhere in the “middle” of recorded European history, and might it be further characterized as an era fraught with “evil”? Might all of European society, with its history of enslaving and abusing other peoples, be characterized as “evil,” and, hence, the middle portion of European history be considered the “mid evil” period?