Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
...instead of ‘not so much’.
On the third line down of the review:
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Kiki, That same person in that same review wrote, ”...when person shares their stories about there life.” Right and wrong in the same sentence, just to cover all the bases, I guess, just in case. I believe maybe Justin Case wrote this review.
Last edited by Tom Neely (2008-07-08 19:25:14)
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Yes, I actually had to skip over that part of the sentence without really reading it, because it would have made my head explode.
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Hi Kiki and welcome. At first glance, “not some much” looks like an ordinary slip. I got
ghits( “not some much” ) = 11,900. *
Doesn’t that seem kinda high for ordinary slippage? Could it be merely a grand scale slip. I scrolled through the google results and found ‘some much’ better (that is, non-head-exploding) examples.
Tangentially, in the above scrolling process, something about the google search engine results caught me off balance. Of the reported “about 11,900 English pages,” google would only show me 502 actual web page links. After scrolling to the last results page, I clicked on “repeat the search with the omitted results included” and then google’s search summary estimated “about 700 English pages” (which was a pretty good estimate for the show of 697 actual links). I can’t help but wonder what the initial 11,900 number represents. Moreover, is it possible that this kind of wild estimation is occasionally skewing our linguistic usage perceptions? I hope not. My best guess for actual web page link counts is (ignoring 11,900):
ghits( “not some much” ) = 697 and ughits( “not some much” ) = 502.*
These three digit hit counts are more in line with JOrkel’s eggcorn esthetic than 11,600 is. So, I don’t really know where this leaves us. Would somebody please attempt to re-create these results before my head implodes? Am I missing something here?
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Thanks.
Hmm, I don’t know the inner workings of google searching; I have no idea what your findings suggest, but 12000 is a bit nuts.
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Kiki, thanks for the sanity check. Sorry about the overly rigorous description of my little google issue. I’ve been a google junkie for a long time and have the highest possible regard for google and its googlistas. It’s just that the initial hit count guess of 11,600 seemed to be a little bit high by a factor of roughly 23. I guess my bottom line is this:
Not being a linguist, when I evaluate a potential eggcorn candidate, the first thing I usually look for is a malapropism in the reshaping (probably due to my highly unrefined sense of humor). Then, I look at ghits. If ghits has more than five figures, I assume that the expression is likely already well on its way into common usage (too late for eggcornhood). For me, five figure ghits fall into a gray area and can go either way. Four or less figures and I’m definitely interested in sniffing around. Two to three figures and I’m prematurely excited as I determine ughits and start probing deeper. Teen and single figure ghits and it’s probably just a slip or typo. This is probably a sub-optimal approach and I usually miss a lot of obvious linguistic stuff – like semantic context, imagery and on and on.
Your example expression combined with a possible google estimation glitch just happened to straddle a wide chasm in my amateur evaluation tactic for eggcorn candidates. So, I thought Justin Case might find my little discrepancy report useful. Can you now see why “about 11,600” ghits deflating down to “502” ughits seemed quite odd to me? The details don’t really matter that much, but I try to be thorough only for my own selfish benefit.
Anyway, after randomly reading several “not some much” hits and sleeping on it, the malapropism imagery doesn’t seem very strong, so it’s probably not an eggcorn. Don’t give up. IMHO, you are definitely on the right track. It might be a reshaping due to the similar phonemes involved (say “some much” ten times real fast and it starts to sound like “so much”). I still have a lot to learn about the differences among Slips, innovations and reshapings. A real linguist could surely explain this much more ‘betterly’ and correctly than I have.
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I wouldn’t deny that it’s an eggcorn, though not a terribly striking one to me. The meaning difference between ‘some’ and ‘so’ in this context is not great enough to strike one as striking (if I may coin a phrase.)
A possible non-eggcornish source for it that occurs to me would be an anticipation typo yielding ‘not som much’ followed by a spell-checker correction. It amazes me how many people just let the spell-checker fix things without checking it. (And who will check the checkers?) But with as many ghits as the phrase gets, it’s doubtful that all would result from that process.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-10 20:25:05)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Interesting idea, David. Spell-checker is the bane of those who are bad spellers or sloppy typists; it’s wrong often enough that I stopped using it a long time ago.
How interesting that you didn’t see such a big difference, because I actually submitted for the very reason that the difference between ‘some’ (a middling amount) and ‘so’ (a lot) struck me pretty forcefully. It changes the meaning of the phrase entirely—if ‘some much’ can even have a meaning! Just saying it makes the world tilt at a really weird angle.
Roger: here I was, blissfully ignorant, in submitting my example, to all the intricacies of defining eggcorns! Next time I will read up on the linguistic rules. Thanks for the encouragement!
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“So” does indeed mean “a lot” (better yet, “alot”) to allot of people. For some of us it still means “to a commensurate degree”, and we in fact look for something to commensurate with. (I expect kem to commensurate with me on this…) I mean when I hear “I am so hungry” I think “so hungry as to what?”, or “so hungry that what will happen?” Granted, that is a fuddy-duddy way to take it (is/so/somewhat fuddy-duddy). But for people like me it is not so extreme a term as “very” or “extremely”.
In any case, “a lot” and “some” are both relatively tepid quantifications of degree, and thus(/so), although in some(/an important?) sense they contrast, they are actually pretty similar meanings. A lot(/somewhat) more similar than say “egg” suddenly showing up in “acorn”
Bottom line, I don’t disagree with you that they differ in meaning, even to a striking degree. But the substitutions in most eggcorns are strikinger(/(ever) so striking…).
Anyway, please don’t be afraid to submit what may not fit the linguistic rules for eggcorns. How else can we properly refine those linguistic rules, if not via submissions that stretch them?
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-11 08:55:53)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I hear this as along the lines of s’mores… not s’much. I don’t see it as an eggcorn… Perhaps “ear” spelling.
Feeling quite combobulated.
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Thanks for chiming in, everybody. The strange syntactic feel of ‘some’ still has me scratching my head. This is because ‘so’ is traditionally a sub-modifier in contrast to the full-blown adjective status of ‘some’. Perhaps ‘so’ is in the process of becoming an adjective to post-modern era ears. But, I do see the difference in imagery between ‘so’ and ‘some’. For me, this imagery shift is overwhelmed by the extreme ease of phonetic reshaping (merging adjacent m-sounds). Most of the hits I examined had otherwise decent grammar and good spelling, including apostrophes. Decent grammar, correct apostrophes plus three figure ughits leaves me inclined to wonder about the typo/spellcheck hypothesis. However, the very same reasons also give it some eggcorn legs, but not some much, IMHO. It’s a pretty hard call and I found myself out on yet another thin linguistic limb. So fun!
kikiborges wrote:
<rip>Roger: here I was, blissfully ignorant, in submitting my example, to all the intricacies of defining eggcorns Next time I will read up on the linguistic rules. Thanks for the encouragement
Kiki, No need to ‘beet’ yourself up. Your first submission is ever some much better than mine was. I still blush whenever I recall how very lame my first post in this forum was (please, don’t bother to look it up or tell anybody about it). I’m really just an eggcornita in eggcornista’s clothing. The forum regulars have been extremely helpful to me. I hope they don’t tire of my thickness of skull anytime soon. Unlike them, I can type faster than I can think, as likely you have noticed. You are most welcome, indeed.
Last edited by rogerthat (2008-07-12 00:05:27)
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