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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2008-04-03 11:52:41

Sternie
Member
Registered: 2008-04-03
Posts: 1

It's a "hard rope to tow"

Unless there’s a new nautical idiom out there, I believe this is a creative (and functional) misunderstanding of the phrase “hard row to hoe”.

I first noticed “hard rope to tow” on a message board and encountered a few more uses thanks to Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2 … +to+tow%22

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#2 2008-04-03 15:17:25

jorkel
Eggcornista
Registered: 2006-08-08
Posts: 1456

Re: It's a "hard rope to tow"

Welcome to the eggcorn website, Sternie.

We discussed a few variations of the idiom “a hard row to hoe” before in this forum. Here’s one such posting…

“A hard road [instead of row] to hoe” by Carol the Dabbler Contribute! 2 2007-05-21 10:59:19 by Carol the Dabbler

(You can locate this by clicking on “Search” in the red menu bar above and entering a single word—like hold—in the search window).

Overall, I think that the original is a particularly good idiom for spawning eggcorns since people may not relate to it’s imagery. So, I believe that any varaiation that carries good imagery suffices as an eggcorn. I would then add that the best eggcorns are the ones that have been generated by different individuals on different occasions, so it helps to check the Google hits. (I think the ones that have 100s or 1000s of hits will probably eventually be documented in the Database).

I actually like the incarnation “hard rope to tow” because all the elements of the imagery coalesce in a meaningful way. My personal favorite eggcorn of this idiom is “hard road to hold.”

In theory, one could imagine all sorts of random variations containing road, rope, row, etc. combined with hoe, hold, tow, etc. There is no way to tell whether the ones people come up with are intention or whether they arise naturally because the new imagery drives their creation. But, I will point out that eggcorns must always be unintentional.

Last edited by jorkel (2008-04-03 15:40:14)

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