Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I may have found a new one, this time an actual eggcorn: “lost leader” instead of “loss leader.” Now, I have only seen this once and it might just have been a typo, but I think it probable that the author (or the editor) thought this was correct usage. The phrase is used in a reply by Amire Majideimehr to a reader letter in Widescreen Review magazine, issue 133 (July/August): ”...unless you treat them as lost leaders to sell something else, which makes money, such as portable music players…” Besides “lost” and “loss” sounding and spelled so similarly, the meaning is almost the same. When you sell a loss leader, you have lost the profit on that item you would have otherwise enjoyed.
(I would also say that in my opinion ”..else, which makes money, such as…” would have been better as ”..else that makes money, such as…”, but that’s a different issue. <g>)
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Makes sense to me as an eggcorn. In the database we have “no love loss” (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/712/loss/) which also plays on this same confusion. A google search for “as a lost leader” (http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&clien … arch&meta=) turns up a hundred other examples.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Thanks for pointing out that a google search turns up more examples. However, many of the hits from such a search use “lost leader” in a different context, referring to a person who was, or could have been, a leader but is actually or metaphorically lost to society. Curiously, using only “lost leader” as the Google search phrase, as I originally did, rather than “as a lost leader” turns up primarily examples in this other, unrelated context
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An interesting example turned up in a recent comment on the RealClimate blog. The discussion concerned misleading reporting of science in the media.
Too bad the media can’t, or won’t, parse the reality from the inference or intent. Looks like yet another Svensmark styled piece with overtones of lost leaders and red herring messaging.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar … #more-7753
It is not clear to me what the commenter intends by ‘lost leaders’. From context I guess that the sense is that the lead, or the motivation, for the argument, is badly misinterpreted science. Or maybe that the message or the headline of the article is different from what the science justifies. The lost leaders in this case are misleading. It’s hard to say what exactly was meant, but it’s nevertheless interesting to see “loss leader” so very far afield.
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