short-sighted » short-sided

Classification: English – /t/-flapping

Spotted in the wild:

  • While I agree that comparisons between Al Queda and a trained national military force is short sided, dhoyt, I would not agree that religious martyrdom and cold blooded murder are in any way the same (besides, wouldn’t angry, indiscriminate terrorists be committing hot blooded manslaughter?). (MetaFilter)
  • I don’t think there is one group of people that is greedy and then us poor people aren’t greedy that I think is silly, but I do think people are short sided. I think record companies are short sided and created and exasperate a lot of these problems so I hold my industry accountable and we always were the elite kind of store with out industry anyways. (link)
  • “I think it is very short-sided to contaminate the environment for a short-term gain,” Post said. (Odessa American Online, 09 June 2005)
  • If true, this practice is at once both unnecessary and incredibly short-sided. (link)
  • I think that it’s very much a short sided “might makes right policy” that really needs to change. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

This is another one of the American English /t/-flapping eggcorns, like _deep-seeded_, _centripetal » centripedal_ etc.

In soccer and other varieties of football, _short-sided_ refers to a game that is played between teams of fewer than 11 players (sides of seven or five are popular). The American Youth Soccer Organization “recommends that all children under the age of 12 play short-sided (less than 11 players per team) soccer”. The Football Association (England) uses the _small-sided_ for games played by teams “of not more than seven players, one of whom is the goalkeeper”. Apparently, _short-sided_ is also a legitimate golf term.

[Information on _short-sided_ in football corrected after an error was pointed out by Mark Liberman on Language Log.]

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/07/13 |

exact » extract

Chiefly in:   extract revenge on , extract vengeance on

Variant(s):  extract revenge upon, extract vengeance upon

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • A British teenager allegedly brought down the Internet systems of a major US port while attempting to extract revenge on a fellow IRC user, a court heard today. (The Register, Oct. 6, 2003)
  • The third-seeded Scots will try and extract revenge upon second-seeded Hiram College for a five-game loss back on Oct. 13. (College of Wooster press release, Oct. 30, 2004)
  • The win extracted revenge on the Lady Bees, who had beaten Royalton (12-5, 10-5) in December. (Brecksville Sun Courier, Feb. 10, 2005)
  • “Perhaps we misjudged their primary concern,” he said. “It wasn’t resolving their credit issue. It was extracting vengeance on the PUC.” (San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 15, 2001)
  • It is not courageous to wage war, a decision largely made by senior Bush officials who avoided serving in Vietnam, to pre-emptively attack Iraq based largely upon false intelligence and a son’s personal animus to extract vengeance on Hussein. (Missoulian, letter to the editor, Apr. 6, 2004)
  • I can certainly empathize with the desires that many people have to extract vengeance on Iraqis for the atrocities we have witnessed against Americans. (Johnson Co. Daily Journal, letter to the editor, May 27, 2004)

There is not much of a semantic leap from the relatively rare verb _exact_ (‘to call for forcibly or urgently and obtain’) to the more common _extract_ (‘to obtain by much effort from someone unwilling’). But a construction like _extract revenge/vengeance (up)on_ is clearly an eggcorn, since it could only be based on the idiom _exact revenge/vengeance (up)on_. We would normally expect _extract_ to take the preposition _from_, rather than _(up)on_ (typical of _exact_ and a few other similar verbs such as _inflict_ and _wreak_).

(See also exact » enact.)

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/02/19 |

seat » seed

Chiefly in:   deep-seeded

Classification: English – /t/-flapping

Spotted in the wild:

  • Still, eight years ago, Darryl Reginelli saw, as others would later on, an opportunity in New Orleans’ lack of a deep-seeded pizza tradition. (Times-Picayune, January 28, 2005)
  • Iesa Galloway, Houston Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the questionnaire was “rooted in deep-seeded ignorance of the religion of Islam and the Muslim people.” (Fox News, January 19, 2005)
  • “The brain is the seed of emotions, personality, vocations and creativity. Brain disorders not only produce physical disability but also hinder human potential. Our goal is to restore the brain to its maximum potential at as early an age as possible,” says Dr. Wiebe, Kinsmen Chair in Pediatric Neurosciences. (Dr. Samuel Wiebe to help children with injury and illness of the brain, U Calgary, January 13, 2005)
  • Epicuren Medicated Acne Cleanser, A medicated anti-bacterial deep pore cleansing gel that is non-irritating to the skin. This product is designed to sterilize the skin’s surface, lift and remove residue and loose dry skin. (Rosanna’s Salon & Day Spa)

Analyzed or reported by:

In the Language Log post cited above, Mark Liberman writes:

>For most Americans, “deep-seeded” is pronounced exactly the same way as “deep-seated”, due to (what linguists call) flapping and voicing of /t/ in words like seated, as in many other contexts (e.g. in fatter and rabbiting and at all, but not in attack). And in terms of the current ordinary-language meaning of the words involved, “deep-seeded ignorance” makes sense, while “deep-seated ignorance” doesn’t. Ignorance can be planted deep and thus have deep metaphorical roots, but deep-seated ignorance would have to be ignorance cut with a lot of room in the crotch, or maybe ignorance sitting in a badly-designed armchair.

We might add that for most speakers, the verb _seed_ will be common in the sense relating to sports competitions, leading to _top-seeded_. AHD4 defines this sense as follows:

>7\. Sports a. To arrange (the drawing for positions in a tournament) so that the more skilled contestants meet in the later rounds. b. To rank (a contestant) in this way.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/01/31 |
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