moot » mood

Chiefly in:   a mood point

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • The long head of the biceps muscle runs right over this and the short head runs right along the side of it. So just by understanding that bicep recruitment is inevitable, trying to cut the biceps out of the picture with various hand placements is a mood point. (bodybuilding.com)
  • With a scream the boy awoke from his dream and cupped his face. That’s when he noticed the blood and looked down. He had slept walked and unknowingly killed his parents. Or did he know. It was a mood point now. (link)
  • Having a deterministic view on life, as you well know, morality is a bit of a mood point to me personally, as predetermination ultimately does not give people a choice in how they behave and what they do. As such morality, or the justice system for that matter, are artificial constructs to keep society functioning. (link)

Rarer than its cousin, [mute point](eggcorns.lascribe.net/eng…).

| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/01/12 |

moot » mute

Chiefly in:   a mute point

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Bringing in the new year is another mute point with me. The new year is going to occur whether I’m asleep, watching television or at a New Year’s Eve party. (The Purcell Register)
  • The big run brought the Lancer lead to as far as 17 points before Sonora could make a bucket with 2-minutes, 14-seconds remaining in the game. Sonora’s six-point run in the final minutes proved to be a mute point. (Manteca Bulletin)
  • The smallish blond boy seemed docile at times, offering a smile and babbling conversation (he was deaf as well) one moment, and flying into a fit of rage without any notice the next. I believe he was in the 3rd grade, but since he never attended classes, it is a mute point. But he wandered the halls, keeping order, attacking other students, biting legs and smiling all the while. (link)

A less common variation of this is the [mood point](eggcorns.lascribe.net/eng…).

[Update: 2007-09-16, CW] On the Eggcorn Forum, poster Lauralai points to the variation _moo point_ as employed in the TV series “Friends” with the following justification:

> _It’s like a cow’s opinion. It just doesn’t matter. It’s moo._

[Addendum by AMZ, 2007-10-31: And now, reported by Damien Hall on ADS-L, the verb mute: ‘A bid for the 2018 finals has been muted for some time’
near the beginning of the story ‘FA confirm World Cup bid’ on MSN Sport. (On 2007-11-6, at least some of the copies of this story have been corrected.)]

| 3 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/01/12 |

woe » whoa

Chiefly in:   Whoa is me!, the whoas of ...

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • gah, im getting those problems today! whoa is me! wow, talk about a jinx………GRRRR (WordPress support forum)
  • Dang, I’m ruined I’ll never be able to post here again. Whoa is me. Cats are man’s best friend, they just won’t stoop to admitting it. (link)

This might sometimes be difficult to distinguish from a simple misspelling. But the relative obscurity of the word _woe_ and the unusual syntax of the original expression make this a very likely eggcorn. In particular when the writer has used another interjection in the immediate vicinity, a sense of startled dismay emerges.

Pointed out to me on IRC by [Craig Hartel](nuclearmoose.com).

See also _woeth me_.

[Arnold Zwicky, 14 August 2007: Mark Peters has now used “Jabberwocky: Whoa Is Me!” as the title of his babble column on children’s eggcorns (babble is “a magazine and community for the new urban parent”).]

[Arnold Zwicky, 11 December 2008: Bob Ray writes to report “the whoas of accessibility” in a forum discussion on accessibility. Other examples of “the whoas of X” can be googled up: X = teaching, free software, our nation, politics, motherhood, …]

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/01/12 |