Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I’m not sure about this one, but I was afraid “fairinheight” would get lonely without a mate. Perhaps the idea of being “centered” and therefore precise is at work here. As far as I know, Latin centum (“hundred”), which provides the “centi-” of “centigrade,” is not related to Latin centrum (“center”). (Calvert Watkins seems to agree.) No doubt many of these are just misspellings by speakers of non-rhotic dialects. 1600/207 raw/unique ghits. Examples:
What is the physical state of methane at minus 170 degrees centergrade?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index … 755AAiw3nV
[Hey! Don’t just go online to get your physics homework done! Read the textbook – that’s what it’s there for!! Sheesh.]
During the lamination and delamination process a temperature range of 100 degrees centergrade to 150 degrees centergrade for the drum and fuser is maintained.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0529399.html
[I’d like to thank the good folks at freepatentsonline.com for providing us with so much evidence over the years.]
If the temperature yesterday was 0 degrees centergrade; and the temperature today is twice as cold as it was yesterday. What would the temperature be today?
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-o6f57pEi … -?cq=1&p=2
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Yes, quite possibly “misspellings by speakers of non-rhotic dialects”. Also quite possibly accurate spellings by speakers of dialects with rhotic spreading of some sort. I can easily pronounce centigrade where the r sound starts before the g closes.
Not a striking eggcorn, but some re-imaging may be going on for some speakers.
That last one is a puzzler: what does “twice as cold” mean, anyway?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Cool one, Pat. From ‘centergrade’, I get the image of a day with pleasant weather. Also, the median temperature in a moderate climate outside of the US comes to mind.
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