Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
[on radio: This bothers you] because it flies in the space of [what’s important to you]
A lot of the rhetoric […] really claims that it’s never possible to get stable requirements, and that just flies in the space of decades of experience.
(Eagerly?/energetically?/violently?) trespassing on someone’s or something’s space is similar in the sense of affront it produces to flying in his/her/its face. So, this is a nice reshaping that makes pretty good sense.
.
I did not find more than the one example on the Internet, however, and it may well not be standard for those caught using it, much less to the exclusion of “fly in the face ofâ€. Still …
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-04-08 19:33:00)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
Nice one. Very 22nd century. Speaking of one-offs, the singletons of a decade ago would be the equivalent of how many ughits today?
Here is a probable typo, fly on the face of – wait, is this an uncannily perfect Tuttle typo? It’s got the fly and everything – well, everything except a reimagined image, unfortunately. Even if the on for in substitution is legit, the meaning of the idiom would not be changed.
Healthy Life blog, Acne archive:
This advice might fly on the face of what you have been told previously. In Western cultures fats are treated like gremlins. (But lean toward fats)
(http://www.globalhealth2008.org/category/acna)
Two more one-offs
Houston, Texas civil engineering blog:
While the “unlimited mobility, unlimited accessibility†flies in the phase of 60 years of traffic engineering orthodoxy, I think Houstonians (and Texans in general) are better set up to “grasp†the concept, since the parking lane/main lane dichotomy is so similar to our feeder/freeway setup.
(http://neohouston.wordpress.com/2009/02 … n-houston/)
War blog:
We must bear an intolerable burden and grasp for an explaination for that which flies from the face of all that is decent and honorable.
(http://www.patriotguard.org/Forums/tabi … fault.aspx)
Again, I get the picture. The image is of retreat rather than attack, however.
Let me get my bearings:
space = Eggcorn? Reshaping? is there a difference?
fly on = typo, reshaping
phase = pail? flounder?
flies from = reshaping?
Last edited by burred (2009-04-08 18:51:08)
Offline
So many googlenonces! Actually, here’s a second example, though with this particular spelling it too is a nonce:
In the process he is going to discourage other people not to vote since they value his view. this flys on the face of the IEC efforts in encouraging all …
“Fly on the face of†feels very much to me like it blends “on the face of it†into the reshaping. It “flies†against what “on the face of it†seems to be the case.
.
Flying from the face has archaic or Biblical overtones for me:
Rev. 6.16 “And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lambâ€;
exclaimed the English Earl scornfully; “ God* forbid, Count, that my father’s son should fly from the face of a Saracen.â€
Our English brave Sea-men shall stand upon Deck, who scorns for to fly from the face of a Turk; Pope, Devil, and French-men, come all if you dare,
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-04-08 20:46:10)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
A bit of checking1 and number crunching led to the result that internet traffic has been growing at a very steady exponential rate of 87% per year2 (+/- 4%), based on data collected annually from 1990 to 2007. This means that, vagaries of sampling aside, and with all else being equal, a googlenonce spotted at the inauguration of this forum four and a half years ago was equivalent to about 17 ughits today. It should be possible to compare the various observations for the number of hits for the same eggcorn that have been cited over the years, to see if they multiply faster or slower than the bulk traffic.
[1] http://cfp.mit.edu/events/jan08/present … growth.ppt
[2] Uber-technical note for ultra-sticklers (I am burred after all): this is the detransformation-bias corrected exp(slope) for a semilog regression of web traffic volume against year. The observed mean growth rate is just under 91% per year. In [1], the figure provided of 85% for the mean growth rate is the geometric mean, which is an estimate of the median, not the mean.
Last edited by burred (2009-04-09 11:49:46)
Offline
A bit more relevant than internet traffic growth might be the increase in the number of pages that Google indexes. If you put the numbers in http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/ … s-big.html into a graph, it appears that the annual growth rate of Google pages indexed is about 130%. So one hit four and a half years ago would be the same as 40 hits today.
However, I have some question whether the average “text quality” of a Google index page has been maintained over the last fifteen years. I suspect the average Google page today has less text, and less original text, than earlier Google-indexed pages.
In addition, the metrics for ghits and ughits have changed (and are changing) in unrevealed ways. The ghit calculation can vary wildly, as Pat has often pointed out. And ughits are selected from a batch of a thousand that are in turn selected by a page rank metric that is constantly changing. I think we should be wary of drawing any conclusions from time series Google hit stats.
OK, I’ll bite. What’s a googlenonce?
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
I don’t remember whose term it was (not mine—not yours either, I guess). It’s a singleton google hit—you do a search and only one page is returned. What’s a better term?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
Sounds good to me. Googlenonce. I suppose we could also call it a hapax legomenonce.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
Kem, hapax legomenonce – good one. I’m sure I’ll get confused and say legooglenonce.
David, you’ve used googlenonce more tha nonce, but you’re the only one on this forum who has. The paternity trace points to you. Googling eggcorn googlenonce is a googlenonce pointing to your post. Your imagination is more fertile than you will admit.
Pat Schwieterman, 2009-03-18 15:07:53 >> The “nonce†in “for the nonce†arises through a different but similar process. The first n in “nonce†is from the old inflected form of the demonstrative in Old English “for then anesâ€â€”“for that one thing.â€
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3613
David Tuggy, 2008-11-25 11:15:49 >> I think I remember reading and/or contributing to discussion which suggested that eggcorns are nonce folk-etymologies, hence successful ones should be full-scale folk-etymologies.
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?pid=8581
Fishbait2, 2008-12-04 20:04:59 >> No, it was a nonce word, but not an obvious slip. I just found it irresistible.
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?pid=8660
David Tuggy, 2008-08-15 10:12:51 >> Still, it was one of those rare googlenonces … this was the only [one that] “took off like a rocker.”
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?pid=7447 Appears to spring forth fully formed from David’s forehead 49 days later
David Tuggy, 2008-06-27 16:27:00 >> A ghit may record a nonce error, a spell-checker or other computer-induced error, a joke, a made-up structure (e.g. a punning e-handle).
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2774 a classic. The genesis event cross-fertilization of google and nonce?
nilep, 2008-06-15 13:14:26 >> I thought to compare “being haved†versus “being haveâ€, but a Google search for the latter seems to return at least as many instances of the (actual) verb have as the (nonce) adjective have.
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2751
Jim Gordon, 2006-01-05 15:12:27 >> Likewise, Fishbait’s tramsteamer seems to me an eggcorn, not a simple misspelling and more than a nonce word (why not “an once word�).
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=220
Offline
In reference to Burred’s calculations above, it occurred to me a few months ago that Jorkel had started including google totals almost as soon as he started posting here in the Summer of 2006. So I went back to a bunch of his earliest posts to see how the numbers had changed. It ended up feeling like a pointless exercise—I got results all across the board. “By the waistside” had grown astonishingly—something like 7 or 8 times what it had been. “Grossery store” was equally amazing—I got the EXACT same number Joe had! And “hugemongous” had actually lost 1000 or more hits over 2.5 years. Perhaps a bigger sample would have revealed a clearer pattern or patterns, but there was no consistency whatsoever to the numbers I got.
Offline