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traitor » trader

Classification: English – /t/-flapping

Spotted in the wild:

  • Benidict Arnold, is he a trader? First let me say that I think he was a trader to Americans, I want to know if there is anyone out there that can stand up for him? (History Channel discussion forum)
  • Hmmmmmm Kerry speaking to other foreign leaders while we have troops in harms way. Lets see oh Senator Kerry…lets see I think thats called treason…underminding a President oh and if you are a Senator its treason. So Kerry is either a liar or a trader. (History Channel discussion forum)
  • To betray is to commit treason against; to be a trader. To be false or disloyal to. (link)

Presumably, the notion of exchanging something for something (allegiance to one’s country for allegiance to another master) comes into this.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2004/12/07 |

barrow » barrel

Chiefly in:   wheel barrel

Classification: English – vocalized /l/

Spotted in the wild:

  • I got my wheel barrel and shovel out and was preparing to lay the gravel and the neighbors laughed at me. (Light blogging, heavy machinery, by Joi Ito)
  • Glue the wheels to both sides of the cup (open end facing up). The handle is the wheel barrel handle! Next, put dirt in the wheel barrel. Plant any flower you like (geraniums do well). Recycling is fun! (perpetualpreschool.com)

Analyzed or reported by:

Arnold Zwicky (see link above) refers to a discussion on ADS-L (04/08/11-12) and points out “the vocalization of [l] that would make barrel and barrow homophonous, or nearly so”.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2004/12/04 |

handful » hand few

Classification: English – vocalized /l/

Spotted in the wild:

  • This includes a few women (no more than a hand few). (E2)
  • Out of the seventy families in this village, only a hand few are literate and almost all work as labourers because they do not own land. (Unesco, Dec 11, 2006)
  • Only a hand few of the characters look as though they have had some serious time spent developing them. (uk.gamesport.com, game review, Nov 9, 2006)
  • As funny as it sounds you are only a hand few of people who get where my name comes from lol. (Ukulele Underground forum, June 19, 2008)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • an entangled bank (link)
| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2004/12/04 |

acorn » eggcorn

Variant(s):  egg-corn, egg corn

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Even a blind squirrel will find an eggcorn once in a while. (link)
  • Also I have oak trees in my pasture. My vet said my horses would be ok because they shouldn’t eat the eggcorns. (link)
  • Motifs: Eggcorns and leafs (Washington County 2003 Tombstone Project, (with image))
  • Are your trains on your out door railroad always derailing because of debris like leaves and egg corns on the track? (link)
  • A vomit pile was also found which looked like it may have contained deer skin with hair attached , egg corns not well chewed. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

_Eggcorn_, at first _egg corn_, is the original eggcorn. This misspelling for _acorn_ was first [reported](itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/l…) by Mark Liberman at [Language Log](itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/l…), citing a discovery by Chris Potts, on September 23, 2003. Geoffrey Pullum [suggested](itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/l…) the term _eggcorn_ to refer to this particular kind of spontaneous malapropism.

The word _acorn_ itself may have undergone the same reshaping process, ie once have been an eggcorn. See the [American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition, 2000](www.bartleby.com/61/5/A00…):

> **ETYMOLOGY:** Middle English akorn, from Old English æcern.
> **WORD HISTORY:** A thoughtful glance at the word acorn might produce the surmise that it is made up of oak and corn, especially if we think of corn in its sense of “a kernel or seed of a plant,” as in peppercorn. The fact that others thought the word was so constituted partly accounts for the present form acorn. Here we see the workings of the process of linguistic change known as folk etymology, an alteration in form of a word or phrase so that it resembles a more familiar term mistakenly regarded as analogous. Acorn actually goes back to Old English æcern, “acorn,” which in turn goes back to the Indo-European root *g–, meaning “fruit, berry.”

This was reported by Daniel Ezra Johnson and [documented](itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/l…) by Mark Liberman.

| 7 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2004/12/04 |
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