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surname » sirname

Variant(s):  sirname, sir-name

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • All we know about it is that the men who got up the petition made up this name from certain letters found in the sir-names of the signers. (Schoolcraft County Pioneer (Manistique, Mich.), vol. 3, no. 35 (Dec. 23, 1882), pg. 3)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • acw, Mark Liberman, et al. (link)
| Comments Off link | entered by JamesOfMichigan, 2005/03/25 |

invaluable » unvaluable

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

While some of the occurences are conscious plays on ‘invaluable’ for a sarcastic note, a lot are genuine. I suppose that once people have absorbed the counterintuitive use of ‘in-’ in the word, they start equating any negation of ‘valuable’ with it.

[Or so I thought… but ‘disvaluable’ in that sense is pretty much non-existent. I guess the phonetic closeness has a part to play too.]

| Comments Off link | entered by Sravana Reddy, 2005/03/25 |

breadth » breath

Chiefly in:   a hair's breath

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • He had won by a hair’s breath - somehow, some way - with a hidden reserve that he hadn’t known was in him. (link)
  • Even in this age of fast food and automation, our body’s natural balancing mechanism brings us within a hair’s breath of weight equilibrium. (link)

See also [_hair > hare_](eggcorns.lascribe.net/eng…) and [_hair’s breadth > hare’s breath_](eggcorns.lascribe.net/eng…)

| Comments Off link | entered by thiebes, 2005/03/24 |

already » all ready

Classification: English – citational

Spotted in the wild:

  • 1. if you haven’t all ready done so, create a directory called utility (link)
  • It’s December 11th and over 30,000 people come to march to revitalize youth, to affirm traditional family values, to reclaim the state, refocus the nation and visualize in the natural what God had all ready done in eternity. (link)
  • See any documentation that came with your network card if you are having trouble, also feel free to ask friends to help set up your computer if they have all ready done their own. (link)
| 3 comments | link | entered by thiebes, 2005/03/24 |

trove » cove

Chiefly in:   treasure cove

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • But then I realized that inside Munchies was a fucking treasure cove of junk food. (link)

Google returns 376,000 hits for “a treasure trove” and only 1,020 for “a treasure cove,” though both numbers go down when you search for “a * treasure trove” or “a * treasure cove” (mimicking the structure of the in-the-wild occurrence).

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary gives an entry for “treasure trove.” Nothing for “treasure cove,” though.

| Comments Off link | entered by rgm, 2005/03/22 |
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