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tenet » tent

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Dowd violated one of the cardinal tents of the newspaper business: Don’t mislead your readers, because your credibility is your only currency. Lose it, and the reader won’t care how good a writer you are. (Lufkin Daily News, 2003/05/30)
  • The Islamic disavowal of the primary tents of Christianity demonstrates the fundamental incompatibility of the two religions as mutually reconcilable theologies. (Gregory Alan Thornbury, Ph.D., Union University)
  • One of the basic tents of Christianity as it is practiced in real life is hospitality. (link)
  • One of the key tents of DSI (Dynamic Systems Initiative), is ‘Design for Operations’. (mcrosoft.com)
  • The key thing is that you realize the two go hand-in-hand, and the design of the home and the features of the site must work together to give you the full benefits of efficiency and comfort. This is one of the basic tents of what is called a “passive solar home.” (link)

See also _tenet»tenant_, and the additional remarks there.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/04/03 |

view » you

Chiefly in:   point of you

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • From a medical point of you, if you’re not diseased, you must be healthy, right? (link)
  • Astronomy is a great science to pursue, because not only is it interesting from a scientific and even philosophical point of you, but it also introduces you to skills (like computing, using advanced technology, public presentations, writing reports) that you can use in many different careers. (Astronomical Society of Australia)
  • The thing is, I can only look at it from my point of you, because I haven’t experienced having to do any tests yet and I still have everything to prove (link)
  • From a psychological point of you, our needs change through the ageing process. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

This eggcorn is slightly puzzling because it implies that the writer’s concept of _you_ is something else than (just) his or her addressee. Maybe it falls into the scope of the general, dummy addressee referred to as _you_.

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/04/02 |

butt » bud

Chiefly in:   the bud of someone's jokes

Classification: English – /t/-flapping

Spotted in the wild:

  • Adding insult to injury, the FOX network, which is taking a beating this fall in the ratings, has become the bud of a joke in the form of a fake press release circulating through portions of the TV industry. (link)
  • You know how people say, “You’re the bud of every joke”?? For you it’s “You’re the bud of every lie”, almost every rumor we know is spoken from your lips. (link)
  • It’s funny how some people are. How some people like to have all attention on them, no matter what the price, or who ends up being the bud of the joke. (link)
  • Not one to be the bud of a joke, Drew replied “If I am such a dog, why did you marry me?” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

David Romano, whose post was spotted and referred to by Mark Liberman, found himself in the throws of this eggcorn and subsequently went to the bottom of the matter:

> I was talking with Kirk Boydston about this, and he thinks the eggcorn is “bud of all jokes” since intervocalic /t/ becomes a flap. He also suggested that “butt” as in “objective end” of all jokes. Apparently, I should have checked dictionary.com, since when I looked up “butt”, the first definition of the third sense of the word is: One that serves as an object of ridicule or contempt: I was the butt of their jokes.

Indeed, AHD4 notes two verbal and three nominal senses of _butt_, with all in all three different etymologies. The _butt_ of _the butt of someone’s joke(s)_ goes back to French _but_, meaning goal, target.

See also bud»butt as in _nip in the butt_.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/04/02 |

slither » sliver

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “A leech-like thing slivered across his cheek, and Chekov screamed. He tried to raise his hands to wipe it away, but felt his hands restrained.” (link)
  • “Finally, his tongue lightly slivered across her folds over her thong. She let out a silent moan while pushing her hips up to his face.” (link)

See the _sliver_ >> _slither_ entry for background. The two examples above were among the 37 hits that a Google web search (on 2 April 2005) provided for “slivered across”. I admire the poetry of “slivered across” — and, for that matter, of “a slither of”.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/04/02 |

sliver » slither

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “for example, a crowded beach, with a slither of sky in the background. … billowing clouds on a blue sky, with a slither of beach in the foreground.” (link)
  • “Another favorite is a slither of “Serrano” or “Jabuga” ham from Andulucia accompanied with a slice of bread and a beer or Dry Sherry” (link)

James Cochrane, Between You and I, just says that “sliver” is “often confused with” “slither”, without examples or any indication of the direction of the substitution. Eggcorning is usually strongly in one direction, with the more familiar or frequent item replacing the less familiar/frequent one, rather than the reverse. In this case, I wouldn’t have thought that “slither” and “sliver” (which are phonologically very close) differed much in frequency or familiarity. And it turns out that there are replacements in both directions. Googling on 2 April 2005 turned up ca. 978 raw web hits on “a slither of”, two of them provided above.

See also “slither” >> “sliver”.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/04/02 |
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