Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
For most people, the idiom “to go separate ways” means “to end a relationship.” From this idiom, I get the literal imagery of two detached people traveling upon divergent pathways. Sometimes, when friends or associates “go their separate ways” due to minor differences, they drift apart slowly and amicably.
I think the term “separated” might have a legal definition that describes the state of a married couple with irreconcilable differences who are living apart in anticipation of a possible divorce. I’ve also heard “separated” occasionally used as a euphemism for “divorced.”
I’m not sure whether the expression “go our separated ways” is ‘eggcorny’, but I see a candle glimmer through my ‘eggcornea’ in the semantic context of romantic estrangement.
I got rghits( “separated ways” ) = 7K, which seemed a little too broad. So, to focus my search a little more from the point of view of a jilted lover or a person sadly experiencing a divorce, I got
rghits( “go our separated ways” ) = 28, of which some examples follow:
My one true love informed me that it’s all over, and that we have to go our separated ways from now on.
gibb3t.deviantart.com/journal/17597235/
We will go our separated ways and won’t stay together any more. Goodbye is always the hardest word to say.
hi.baidu.com/%C1%E3%D3%EA%D1%A6%DC%C2/
… but we’ve come to the end of that road and I guess it’s time for us to go our separated ways.
www.robotech.com/community/
Before we separated to go our separated ways, she took my hand, squeezing it, and whispering, “Have faith Remy.”
www.sapphireplace.com/stories/raven/soul-exchange.txt
I especially like the two degrees of ‘separated’ in the last example. Are these ‘Eggcorniferous’ examples or just reshaped slippage?
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in the last example especially, I wonder if that’s more likely to be a typo.
it’s the sort of typo that I make often. I type “separated,” and the get to the word “separate” and simply repeat the same finger pattern.
So is someone is mostly a “muscle memory” touch typist like me, and they almost never type “separate” but DO type “separated,” they could drop that “d” in there without even realizing they’ve done it.
I’m a very fast touch typist; I rather aggressively group letters for faster finger speed. And I end up sometimes typing “there there” instead of “there they” because the finger pattern of “there” holds on for a little bit too long, and I’m not really looking at what I type (fast touch typists don’t, generally)
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The whole topic of “finger memory”, of finger-tactile rather than oral-articulatory patterns functioning as the signifiant of a linguistic symbol on the communicator’s side of the communication interaction, is a fascinating one. The parallel aural/visual distinction is probably clearer to us: we read more than we write. But for those, like Toots and me and probably others here, who actually do spend a lot of time writing on a keyboard, what we do with our hands and fingers comes to be associated with meanings in ways just about as complex as the ways in which what we do with our mouths and throats is associated with meanings in speech.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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And disassociated, too , sometimes.
I know the difference between “their” and “there,” my God I am a professional copyeditor with 26 years of experience, and yet I have in recent years (perhaps correlated w/ the increase in gray hairs…) typed one when I should have typed the other.
In fact, I have also thought “t – h – e – i – r,” letter by letter, and looked at the screen to see that my fingers typed “there.”
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Yes, I resemble that remark very strongly myself.
That kind of case shows that mental links between the tactile and the aural/articulatory are active as well.
It’s not simple.
*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 always think it should be, “I represent that remark,” so that only the syllable “pre” is different)
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