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Chris -- 2018-04-11
E-mail from a literate person contained this phrase where I would have expected “par for the course”—a golf metaphor. We were talking about the prudishness of the American public with respect to their politicians.
“Yeah, in France, that’s part for the course. ”
I wondered if it was just a typo, but I googled and found 117,000 instances. It looks like a number of them are things like “they were also responsible in large part for the course change” but there are plenty of uses meaning “what you’d expect.”
There’s an interesting crossover thing going on with uses of “part for the course” talking about courses of study, where I’d expect “part of the course.” I think that’s what the eggcorn means to these people: something that is “part of the course” is to be expected, and for users of this expression “part for the course” is a funny idiom that means “part of the course.”
Look at this: “We will include these written procedures as part for the course handouts and grading design.”
or
The issue also contains an advertisement for Simpsons Comics No. 63, which features a cover showing Bart and Lisa trying to save bird eggs from Mr. Burns, who is intent on building a golf course. The ad’s tag line reads, “It’s part for the course in October!”
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Welcome to the forum, Qov. This eggcorn was submitted by Ken Lakritz a couple of years ago. However he didn’t note the crossover effects you commented on. I find those kinds of citations really interesting—I think they show that an eggcorn has become so widespread that it’s starting to have influence in its own right on other phrases and expressions. Here’s Ken’s old post in compressed form:
#558 Commentary by Ken Lakritz , 2005/08/13 at 5:34 am
‘part for the course’ for ‘par for the course.’ The connection of the original with golf is lost. What the eggcorn users are trying to say, I believe, is something like ‘a part of the normal course of events.’ About 400 ghits, e.g.,
The fight scenes aren’t bad, they’re just part for the course, exactly what you’d expect from any old boxing movie.
www.cinemablend.com/featu…
Social marginalisation, illiteracy, inefficient markets, conflicts or economic
disasters are all part for the course for microcredit practitioners.
www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/…
The Cantonese Stir Fried Vegetables and the Soya Braised Black Mushrooms were
part for the course, but the Lady Finger Chilli Bean was different …
www.blonnet.com/life/2002… 04/01/stories/2002040100170200.htm
Quite a bit of the material is sexist, but that’s part for the course with this
style of music.
www.progressiveworld.net/…
… it can be hard experience looking for that right opportunity — some rejection, delay and disappointment is part for the course.
www.maglioandclark.com/ca…
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I really did search for it, both in the eggcorn list and through the forums. How could I have found it?
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Well, the search engines here take some gettting used to, and a comprehensive answer to your question could become really long.
Every regular on the site has his/her own favorite work-arounds for dealing with the orneriness of our engines, so my own approach isn’t definitive. But I found Ken’s post by going to the homepage (through the “Eggcorn Database” button above),and there I put “par part” (but not in quotes) into the “Google Search” button. That gave me one hit. Unfortunately, it was on the old and poorly-indexed “Contribute” page that we used to use before the Forum came into being. As a result, once I had clicked on the hit, I had to use the “Find in this page” button on my browser to find Ken’s post—I used “course” as my search word, since “par” or “part” are maddeningly common on a long page.
Alternatively, I could have hit the “Search” button at the top of this page, which searches posts on the Forum only. Once that opened, I could have put “par part” (once again not in quotes) into the search blank. That returns slightly different results—it doesn’t bring up Ken’s post because it wasn’t posted on the Forum. But it does bring up a forum post of jorkel’s that has a link to Ken’s post on the topic.
Confused? I don’t blame you. But here’s an abstraction of the basics: 1) figure out what the main “reshaped” word is in your eggcorn (e.g., “part”), and then its original form (e.g., “par”). 2) go to either the Google Search button on the Eggcorns Database homepage or the “Search” button at the top of this page. 3) enter the original word and its reshaped form into the search blank. 4) For complete, overlapping coverage, it’s prudent to try both those search engines.
Using those steps, I find what I’m looking for about 95% of the time.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-02-02 16:35:41)
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Ahh, I thought it would do phrase searching. I searched for “part for the course” in quotes, as I would have on Google.
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Yeah, that’s where we really start getting into the idiosyncrasies of the two engines. The “Google search” button is pretty amenable to phrase searching in quotes. But if you try to do that with the forum search button, you’ll get the relevant hits, but they’ll be buried in a ton of “false positives.” Why do the two engines behave differently? Dunno.
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