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Chris -- 2018-04-11
The following caught my eye in a blog I read this morning:
The official explanation was that he had been killed in a rough-horsing accident while playing a game of “elude the cat” (a form of hide-and-seek) with fellow inmates.
http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconvers … death.html
A Google search suggests that there are 14,000 raw hits for “rough-horsing”, but that resolves to just 81 unique hits. (!?!)
A look at one page (ten hits) finds four web pages that include the term only as a link to some other page, and I didn’t follow those links.
The Google snippet of another was a list of what I take to be sex acts or descriptions of pornography. I didn’t follow the link to investigate it further, but will give the URL. Consider yourself warned.
rough horse sex . rough horsing
whois.domaintools.com/-r/ballrooms+chaumont/
A sixth hit actually mentions horses – and, oddly, seems sex-related as well.
macham like riding fast horse, I think the guy below will kena injury to his didi 1st! ¶
No worries! Our little bros r well trained to handle the rough horsing by these riders
http://www.sammyboyforum.com/adult-disc … -gers.html
The remaining four hits, though, actually do seem to use “rough-horsing” in the same sense as “rough housing”.
Other than the occasional “rough-horsing” with friends, I haven’t been in a fight for almost ten years.
http://starchy.livejournal.com/122551.html
What if there was an emergency? i have an accident at work, one of the kids gets too rough horsing around and one of them breaks an arm?
http://hisangelsmusings.blogspot.com/20 … fused.html
He was rough horsing with Breanna and somehow hurdled himself towards the back of the guy’s knees and he went down: BOOM!!!
http://bvblade.blogspot.com/
rough horseing
In response to the masterpiece I posted on Friday…
I cannot thank you enough for the bright ray of light into my life that is your artwork.
http://getrichorblogtryin.blogspot.com/ … rsing.html
I think the notion of “horse play” probably influences a reshaping of “rough housing”.
Although all of the above hits come from dot-com (as opposed to au or uk) domains, some of these may be from non-rhotic speakers. The blog that first caught my eye describes events Yunan, China; I’m not sure where the blogger actually lives or acquired English.
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A very nice blend between rough-housing and horsing (around)/horse play, as you suggest.
For it to be an eggcorn it needs to make sense: I would say that a meaning of horsing around roughly would be sufficient, and a more metaphorical connection to acting like a rough horse would work too.
Thumbs up, as far as I’m concerned.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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