Eggcorn Forum

“Fussy logic” was so surprising that I had to check out the Google citations for myself. Some of the ughits are clearly jokes, and a large cluster of them seem to be derived from a single mistake made on a Maytag washing machine, but there are still nearly a hundred discrete examples of “fussy logic” replacing “fuzzy logic” in contexts that imply the speaker/writer was serious and seriously mistaken.

The strangest aspect of this substitution is that it produces an effect opposite to what is intended. We could, as a pun, classify traditional logics such as Aristotelian symbolic logic and predicate calculus as “fussy logics,” since they restrict the referents of truth symbols to binary values. “Fuzzy logics” would then be the symbol systems that allow multivariate truth values. Only a malaprop of olympic proportions could muscle its way through so stark a contradiction.

While most of the examples of “fussy logic” are independent errors, I see some evidence of a citation cascade in which one scientific source picks up a mistake and perpetuates it through a narrow scholarly community. Something like this may also be happening with “inbition” (mentioned at http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2898). Sadly, many scientists read almost nothing outside of the narrow literature of their disciplines. They fail to acquire the broad base in everyday language that might allow them to spot these howlers.

Last edited by kem (2008-08-25 17:00:10)

David: That’s another way of looking at fussy. I was focussing on the methodology of the logic and thinking about fussy in the sense of “fastidious.” You are thinking about the result of using the methodology and the sense of fussy that implies attention to detail, busyness.

So you think “fussy logic” may be an eggcorn?

I think we should take up a collection and send you and Pat to some eggcorn assertiveness training classes.

kem wrote:

David: That’s another way of looking at fussy. I was focussing on the methodology of the logic and thinking about fussy in the sense of “fastidious.” You are thinking about the result of using the methodology and the sense of fussy that implies attention to detail, busyness.

Yes, they are somewhat different senses of fussy. But they are related, and I had both in mind. I had said ‘the result of being fussy about “restrict[ing] the referents of truth symbols to binary values” is that you can make sweeping conclusions and don’t have to fuss with the details.’ I could also have said “you don’t have to be fastidious about the details.” I had in mind what have seemed to me to be sloppy (non-fastidious) analyses that have resulted from imposition of binary categories. People who believe in binary categories think they are done when they have sorted things into their two bins, while there is a lot of analysis still to be done by someone fastidious about fussing with the details.

Those who appreciate such deeper analysis are in fact likely to get fussy and even actually fuss if the details are ignored. That’s a third meaning and possibly a fourth meaning for “fuss(y)”, of course. Again not unrelated to the other two. I would not like to have to try to express the meaning of “fuss” or “fussy” using binary semantic features, or to argue that any given usage must be 100% one of them and 0% the other.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-08-25 23:10:30)

‘z’ and ’s’ are an interesting pair in that they are not just articulatorily and acoustically very close, but graphically as well. Contrast e.g. t/d or k/g. It’s not just a few people who have a kind of lateral dyslexia that makes distinguishing them pretty hard. (The same people may write N with the diagonal going in the opposite direction.) Your suggestion that the fussy logicians may have only read, rather than heard, the phrase, fits in with that fact.

Re fussing with the details: it seems I may have told you guys this, so if so pardon an old man’s absent mind if so, but I got a kick out of a binary-minded linguist’s suggestion, in presenting his theory: “Well, now we’ve laid out the general framework, so let’s move on and flush out the details.”

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-08-26 08:27:33)

In many others cases, these numbers might well say “eggcorn” to me. But this is an unusual case. The topic is very technical technical. The writers seem largely to be non-native speakers. And in these little closed technical communities, chances are high that people are reading each other’s work, and non-native speakers may easily be passing around reshapings among themselves. And many of these references seem to appear in abstracts, which may not be carefully edited.

And note that one of Peter’s examples has both “fussy” and “fuzzy.” In fact, two of them do—if you click on the first one (at a Russian site), you find this:

Lebedev G. N., Alisultanov Sh. M.
Fussy Control by Geology-Prospecting Flight of Remotely Piloted Vehicles in Intricate Weather Conditions
1. The approach to algorithms construction of fuzzy control flight of flight remotely piloted vehicles subjected to wind perturbations is suggested. By fuzzy control we means control strategy based on empirical acquired knowledge concerning the functioning of aircraft which arc represented in linguistic form as fussy logic.

The “fussy control” in the title is followed by “fuzzy control” two sentences later. “Hey, Pyotr, if we use both of them, one is likely to be right….”

What’s going on? I’m not sure. But I’m sure I’m not willing to call these eggcorns yet. There’s far too much weirdness afoot, and there are too many other factors affecting these.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-08-26 15:55:18)