Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Maybe this is a borderline case – it seems to imply nearly the opposite of what it should denote. That “inter-” evokes webs of relationships between individuals, rather than their separateness. This pulls down 266/127 r/ughits. Examples:
I have tried giving each intervidual user who needs full access to the
mailbox explict full rights to the mailbox with no luck.
http://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/pipermail/i … 12250.html
I have created a range of unique designs that can be personalized by you, for that intervidual touch you will never see anywhere else!
http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl … idsclothes
Each intervidual member brings their own influence to the table making our own unique sound
http://soundseeingtours.com/music/?artist_id=14964
Perhaps the people cited above are fans of social philosopher Rene Girard, who introduced the term as a neologism:
Our situation is as René Girard puts it, “intervidual”, and we are bound together in life and death, in sin and liberation.
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/grits010725.html
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Does “individual” emphasize separateness? What is directly in view with the Latinate “individual,” just as with the Greek “atomic,” is the inability to further divide something. Atoms are rich in relationships and live to make molecules. Individuals love to interact. Perhaps “intervidual” evokes this aspect of individuality and atomicity.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Does “individual†emphasize separateness?
Well, indeed it does (as the etymological imagery of division you cite implies). But that doesn’t seem to me to contradict your point that wholes and parts inevitably evoke each other. And your larger claim appears to be more or less the idea that underpins Girard’s use of the term. And of course, I posted this as an eggcorn, after all—I wouldn’t have had I thought that there was nothing to the kind of argument you just made.
Were many of the eggcorners getting quite so subtle, though? I’m a bit skeptical, but then again the aisle/isle flounder does seemingly attest to the widespread unconscious awareness of a photonegative homology between absence and presence. Still, I think eggcorns are the product of a moment rather than of prolonged introspection (even as I’m aware that a lifetime’s training in pattern recognition can inform a moment’s thought), so when the justification for an eggcorn replicates notions in Girardian analysis, I think uncertainty is prudence.
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“a photonegative homology between absence and presence”
Will that be on the test, sir?
Last edited by kem (2008-08-10 21:19:45)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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