Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
If you search google for “I’m being fictitious” or “was being fictitious,” you’ll find a number of examples of people using fictitious instead of facetious. Some are just having fun… like saying “roast beast,” but others are using the phrase seriously, and a few others are second-hand observations of the phrase being used seriously.
Maybe an eggcorn, maybe not.
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I think this has has very strong eggcorn potential! You can see the logical progression here: facetious -> sarcastic/ironic > joking > not true -> fictitious. And since facetious and fictitious sound so similar, it’s natural that people would make this leap.
[Edit: My formatting didn’t come out the way I thought it would, but you can read it…]
Last edited by JonW719 (2008-02-28 09:53:29)
Feeling quite combobulated.
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Craig is right about the serious vs. non-serious usage of “fictitious.” But, what I wonder is whether those who use it seriously always adopted it from those who used it in jest …whether it be firsthand or secondhand. As with many reshapings that have a humorous feel to them, I wonder if anyone arrived at them directly and naively. So, would a person have heard “facetious” and assumed “fictitious” upon reusing it? I suspect so, but I have no idea how we would prove this conjecture without a firsthand account. Nevertheless, I’m leaning toward declaring this one an eggcorn.
Last edited by jorkel (2008-02-29 10:34:14)
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