Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
In today’s New York Times (Feb. 3, 2008, p. 1 of the sports section), John Branch writes, “Jerry Reese, then the player personnel director, had not yet been tabbed as Accorsi’s replacement.” Doesn’t it sound as though he meant “tapped,” i.e. chosen? Granted, “tabbed” could mean labeled. If so, is it still an eggcorn?
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I agree that he meant “tapped”. I can see the context is sound and there’s good imagery substitution. I got only 10 hits for “tabbed his replacement”, “tabbed his substitution”. It seems like an eggcorn to me, albeit so infrequent.
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I agree with Booboo. The construction with “tapped” is the more in-the-language construction, so this is liable to be an eggcorn. We need to check if there is a regionalist use of “tab” in it’s place. I doubt there’s any hypercorrection taking place.
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