Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Didn’t see this one in a search here. Seems like it fits the bill, with the “fore” suggesting the time sequence semantically (since this usually refers to prophecies). About 70 google hits, but they almost all look genuine.
In the wild:
“Self fore filling prophesying and rumors can make big oil barons more extra billions over night.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/1 … 06400.html
“If you constantly focus on your LACK of confidence then it can become a self fore filling prophecy, you can end up feeling not very confident.”
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index … czx&show=7
“Maybe it is just a perspective thing and when you look at it as terrific, it really is, and when you look at it as terrible, it really is. The whole self-fore-filling prophecy.”
http://childinspired.blogspot.com/2008/ … -twos.html
“There are serious people here that are putting forward some real Oak Island research and he is here to only do deception with deceit and performing self-fore filling grandstanding.”
http://andrewgough.co.uk/forum/viewtopi … 6&start=75
“I can’t begin to describe how I feel when people say that they use supermarkets because they have no alternative. Self forefilling prophecy anyone?”
http://www.biteboards.co.uk/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=373
As you can see, there’s some variability in hyphenation and how many words it should be. Would be interesting to know how this is distributed relative to rhoticity in dialects. (PS. first time poster, longtime Language Log reader.)
Last edited by majolo (2008-07-25 01:20:06)
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Good one. It forefills all the requirements of an eggcorn. Welcome to the forum.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Possibly some (blending?) influence from words like foresee, foreknow, forecast, etc. Prophecies are kinds of foresaying, wouldn’t you say?
Yes, distribution wrt rhoticity would be an interesting question—certainly its an easier switch for non-rhotiphors.
*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 is an interesting find, majolo. There seems to be a sort of semantic re-shuffling: the “fore” of prophecy “foresight” gets shifted to the phonetically similar fulfill. I guess that leaves filling on its own to mean fulfill.
I wondered if there were cases of forefilling outside of the idiom self fore filling prophecy. I find 217 ughits for {forefilling -self}. I didn’t try the variant spellings.
Larry Fitzgerald quietly forefilling his promise in the NFL…
http://forum.signonsandiego.com/archive … 54974.html
How about forefilling this one request for high res video clips so we can keep the cheery momentum going.
http://forums.flightsim.com/vbfs/archiv … 52614.html
“My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?” (The 22nd Psalm of David). Yes Jesus was forefilling his last prophecy!
http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/isl … 3DM86KI/p3
By the way, a surprising number of the Google hits are from pornographic stories, etc. Well, I guess not that surprising – it is the internet.
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I wonder if it is relevant that there are a number of other words with an obvious for(e) – morpheme in them whose semantic contribution is obscure. E.g. forego, forbear (as opposed to your forebears ) forgive, forget, forbid, forebode, forsake … forfill would fit pretty well into that paradigm.
Not entirely coincidentally, forfill gets 31k ghits vs. 5.6k for forefill and 2.3k for fore fill/fore-fill . The for – spelling seems less likely to be linked to the meaning ‘ahead of time’ that goes with fore -.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-25 22:32:20)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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A pretty different one, just reported to me:
fulfillowing—fulfilling the following goals
(on radio)
(An anticipation blend mistake, of course, not an eggcorn. Still … fulfilling can be seen as a kind of following after the predicting pattern. I didn’t find any examples in a quick google, however, so I have no reason to suppose anybody is using it.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-26 10:16:30)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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