Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
As in “He had vinegar on his fries, as is his want”. I just saw that one recently in an email. Has anyone else seen that one before?
DixonOffline
I’ve seen it. I would tend to see it as an ordinary malaprop rather than an eggcorn, though. “Wont” is not a common word, in most people’s speech nowadays.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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This eggcorn is already in the database: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/123/want/ As the discussion there notes, the core meanings of the words that are switched are not close (wont=lack, want=desire). In the context of the idiom (“as was his X”), however, the meanings draw closer (as his desire led him, as his need forced him).
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Huh? Wont adj means (meant) ‘accustomed to, tending to’, and wont n. means ‘habit, established custom’. ‘Lack’ is the older meaning of want. Not?
We tend to establish habits or customs of doing things we want or going after things that we lack, so the meanings are closely established metonymically, which helps account for them both fitting in some of the same contexts.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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You’re right, I typed it wrong, then misinterpreted my mistyping.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Oooooops, kem, I didn’t see it on the “Browse Eggcorns” list, or I wouldn’t have posted it. Somehow I overlooked it. Sorry, folks, for any redundancy.
DavidTuggy, I don’t see why it would matter whether the word is currently in common usage or not. In any case, “wont” in the phrase “as is his/her/my/your wont” is certainly in common usage, at least among certain factions of society.Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2008-07-05 03:30:18)
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Dixon Wragg wrote:
DavidTuggy, I don’t see why it would matter whether the word is currently in common usage or not. In any case, “wont” in the phrase “as is his/her/my/your wont” is certainly in common usage, at least among certain factions of society.
You are right, of course that the phrase (and thus in some degree the word) is not obsolete yet. And in a sense you’re right to question whether or not the commonness of an eggcornee (victim, T, whatever) is relevant. It gets back to some of the discussions about what differentiates eggcorns from (other) malapropisms.
Classic malapropisms, as I understand them, are driven by ignorance of a word (or other structure); a person who does not know the word hears that word and mangles it or mixes it in his (or her) mind in such a way that when he (or she) tries to use it another word, ludicrously wrong, comes out instead. I hear the phrase “grand mal seizure”, and since I do not know the phrase “grand mal” I, in reproducing the phrase, say “grandma seizure” instead.
In an eggcorn, it is at least less likely that sheer ignorance of the original word is determinative. When people say “point of you” instead of “point of view”, it is not (one suspects) that they do not know the word “view”, but just that they have not realized that it is being used in the phrase in question.
Anyhow, I think those who write “as was his want” probably simply do not know there is a word “wont” established in other people’s minds.
I don’t know if that clarifies things. I’m still trying, for myself, to decide what differentiates eggcorns from other malapropisms.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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DavidTuggy said:
“I don’t know if that clarifies things. I’m still trying, for myself, to decide what differentiates eggcorns from other malapropisms.” Thanks, DavidTuggy, for the clarification, and I do understand your point now. Like you, I am unclear on where to draw the definitional boundaries around the concept “eggcorn”, partly because I’m brand new to this thing. It appears that the whole concept is pretty new, and it looks like maybe there is no “official” stance on that particular issue, thus a fuzzy boundary in that aspect of the definition. Luckily, the whole idea of eggcorns is not terribly important—just fun. BTW, could you (or someone) explain how I can put quotations in a cool white box like you did? Thanks; DixonOffline
Pardon the stupid newbie questions, but why oh why did my last post show up with no spaces between paragraphs? I saw the problem in “Preview” mode, but couldn’t figure out how to fix it. I had certainly left spaces (blank lines) between paragraphs when I typed it.
DixonOffline
Typing “bq. ” (b-q-dot-space) at the beginning of a paragraph (after a blank line) puts whatever follows the space (up to a new blank line) in a box.
Copy this message to reply and I think you will see it.
I have no idea why your paragraphs ran together, if you really put a whole blank line (i.e. two c/r or “enter” characters) in. If you just put one c/r it thinks you are still in the same paragraph. Sometimes seems to justify, sometimes not: I’m still trying to figure this out, too. It’s supposedly formatted by “Textile”, but what I found on the Internet didn’t match terribly well with what happens. Maybe it’s an old, or restricted, version of Textile.
Underline characters turn italic on or off, but need spaces around them. Asterisks similarly make bold statements.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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DavidTuggy, thanks for taking a moment to educate a techneanderthal! (How’s that for a neologism?)Typing “bq. †(b-q-dot-space) at the beginning of a paragraph (after a blank line) puts whatever follows the space (up to a new blank line) in a box.
Dixon
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A little more discussion of Wont/want here:
For WANT/WONT of ?? by jorkel Contribute! 1 2006-09-13 11:08:41 by Tom Neely
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