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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2009-01-18 10:15:05

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2752
Website

(durable) power of eternity/attornity

Chronic Illness Support Group: Durable Power of Eternity.

[Student bloopers, including:] A power of eternity is what you get when. you are very ill. . Surely good Mrs Murphy will follow me all. the days of my life.

I have heard this one repeatedly, and once caught myself saying it. In my case I think it was just a tongue-slippish substitution of a more-familiar for a less-familiar sound (I talk about etemity more often than I do about attorneys by that name.) In that case it might well be spelled “attornity”, and googling that spelling produces results (some substituting for “attorney” in other phrases):

http://dodge-autos.mercedesguard.cn/pow … elling.htm power of attornity for car selling.

Ranvir has now got the power of attornity in his name!

The left is in a real froth over the appointment of Judge Alberto Gonzales to the post of U.S. Attornity General.

Some cases may be blends of “(power of) attorney” with “authority”:

I had full attornity of the board to represent the company in every platform.

Anyhow, a good many hits with “attornity” seemed to be misspellings of “eternity” so cases of “power of attornity” may also represent the concept “power of eternity”. E.g.

I offically hate Seattle and will be cheering against them for the rest of attornity.

“Eternity” links in eggcornishly with “durable power of” in a couple of ways:
.
(1) If something is eternal, it is completely, totally durable. You might paraphrase it as “a durable power that lasts for eternity”.
.
(2) Wikipedia says: ‘In some jurisdictions, a durable power of attorney can also be a “Health Care Power of Attorney”, an advance directive which empowers the attorney-in-fact (proxy) to make health-care decisions for the grantor, up to and including terminating care and “pulling the plug” on machines keeping a critically and terminally ill patient alive.’ In this case, which is a very salient one for many people and the main reason they would consider granting such a power, the durable power is associated with deciding exactly when a patient (the grantor of the power) will meet eternity.


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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