Eggcorn Forum

I’ve been reading the Abram Smythe Palmer Folk-etymology book that burred located.

Here’s an on-the-money observation from the book:

A human is “an etymologizing animal. He abhors the vacuum of an unmeaning word. If it seems lifeless, he reads a new soul into it, and often, like an unskillful necromancer, spirits the wrong soul into the wrong body.” (p. xiv)

On p. xxiii Palmer mentions that “A New York paper once used Sanscript for Sanskrit.” Our Eggcorn Database has an entry for the (questionable) eggcorn “sandscript.” The “Sans-” of “Sanscript” may pick up on the meaning of the French preposition for “without.” Some who use “Sanscript” may believe (mistakenly) that Sanskrit was not a written language. Or they may be noticing that the many alphabets that have been used to transcribe Sanskrit are in block letters rather than in script.

Examples:

A wiki on Asian studies “According to Hinduism, the goals of life include dharma, artha and karma. Dharma in sanscript translate ‘duty’ or ‘virute’”

Discussion of a tattoo on Yahoo Answers “i saw it last night and i think its sanscript or something like that”

In a travelogue: about a restaurant owner in some mountains in China “Apparently through some technique of drawing upon sexual energy he discovered that he could speak sanscript.”

Last edited by kem (2009-04-11 19:35:37)