Eggcorn Forum

“Beyond the shadow of a doubt” has always felt a bit strange to me because I don’t usually think of doubts as casting shadows. The use of this term in law and philosophy seems to revolve around the idea that a shadow is an insubstantial trace of something – if there’s not even a shadow of a doubt, there’s effectively no doubt at all. But I make sense of the phrase with a peculiar mental picture: I envision movement towards some light-source symbolizing Truth – maybe the same light-source that illuminated Plato’s cave – and as you get closer and closer, you move past and beyond those doubts that surround truth, passing up their outward-leaning shadows in the process.

In any case, I’m not the only one who finds the phrase somewhat odd: there are 11 unique ghits for “shatter of a doubt,” and 7 for “shatter of doubt.” Conspiracy theorists and Ptolemaic hold-outs seem to constitute the principal demographic.

“Beyond a shatter of a doubt” is of course awkward in its own right, and I’m not exactly sure that the users envision. Perhaps the idea is that their certainty about something lies beyond the point at which doubts could shatter their confidence about that thing. Examples:

The Michelson Morrison experiments, carried out all across the globe
proved one thing without a shatter of a doubt : the speed of the aether
on our planet earth was zero, ALL in coexistence with numerous Bible
verses which state that The Earth Is Motionless and is at the center of
our geocentric planetary system, where the sun and moon are rotating
around the earth and not like the heliocentric system which Copernicus,
Kepler, Newton, Galileo and last but not least Einstein successfully have
foisted upon the worlds
http://groups.google.co.il/group/sci.as … 02b6bc382b

The book claims with a shatter of a doubt that the earth does NOT
rotate around its axis, in fact it stands still.
http://vaken.se/modules/newbb/viewtopic … t_id=69329
[I suspect that this was written by the same person who wrote the citation immediately above. I assume that the writer meant “without” rather than “with.”]

However Vreeland’s notes do contain words and short sentences which, still today, Tue Jan 2, 2007, without a shatter of doubt are directly connected to the 911 massacre.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/crashrec … g/fischer/

Why don’t you remove that
distorted curtain from your surroundings, restore your perfect
carpenters eye, and reexamine your surroundings, the buildings left by
the rulers, and you will find, without a shatter of a doubt, who are
behind the New World Order.
http://crashrecovery.org/mindcontrol/

It proves once and for all, beyond a shatter of a doubt, that everything my father fought for was not only just, but correct.”
http://www.alternatehistory.com/discuss … ?p=2426531

You are, without a shatter of a doubt, the most irritating best friend I have ever had. Period.
http://simplykenneth.multiply.com/journ … es=reverse

There are also 4 hits for “shudder of a doubt,” but I’m pretty sure one is wordplay, and I’m suspicious of the rest.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-05-07 00:29:40)