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pains(-)taking » pain-staking

Variant(s):  pain staking

Classification: English – resyllabification

Spotted in the wild:

  • “After all of my pain-staking labour :) I’ve discovered fontforge will automatically create encoding files for you. (I’m glad I did it all manually coz I learned a fair bit about stuff.)” (link)
  • “This will be a pain staking ordeal. Why you may ask well because my ass … So as I begin this pain staking ordeal…” (link)

The first citation was supplied to me by John McChesney-Young on 16 December 2004. Huge numbers of examples can be Googled up.

A nice recutting, suggesting that “take pains to” is either not as widely known as I’d thought or is often not appreciated as the source of “painstaking”.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/05/07 |

cruller » crawler

Chiefly in:   French crawler

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • A local doughnut shop had a sign advertising “French crawlers”. (Wilson in ADS-L)
  • “Frosted with sprinkles Vanilla Frosted with sprinkles French Crawler Glazed Powdered Sugar Double Chocolate” ()

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Doug Wilson (ADS-L, 11 December 2004)

Maybe French crawlers crawl right into your mouth and then into your belly.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/05/07 |

undue » undo

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “The perception of undo influence concerns Nils Jensen.” (link)
  • “Section 1194.4 defines undo burden as “significant difficulty or expense” … computer forensic investigator would cause undo burden on that agency …” (link)
  • “I still believe in the hand-in-hand concepts of separation of church and state and absolute freedom to worship, in the rights of the states to govern themselves without undo federal interference, and in the host of other things that defined me as a Republican.” (The Register Guard, June 26, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • commenter Doug Orleans (link)

The reverse of “do” >> “due” in “make due”, and, like it, probably dependent on a homophony between “do” and “due”, but (as commenter Doug Orleans notes) more likely to be just a spelling error, since it’s hard to see any semantic contribution from “do”. Now (as of 13 July 2005) Chris Waigl notes some semantic support for the reanalysis: “undo influence” might be seen as destructive, or leading to the disintegration (that is, undoing) of something.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/05/07 |

do » due

Chiefly in:   make due , due or die

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Two San Mateo County public employees… were lucky enough to not miss a single paycheck [while serving on the Scott Peterson jury], while other jurors would have had to make due with with a $15 a day court stipend…” (Palo Alto Daily News, 15 December 2004, p. 4)
  • “My sister is famous for last minute appearances but since she comes so rarely we make due and I need to capture her for some serious discussions…” (cited by Mark Mandel on ADS-L, 29 January 2005)
  • “With Floyd batting .391, the Mets have been able to make due with Mike Piazza batting .198.” (Lee Jenkins, "Mets on Edge Show Precision When It Matters", NYT, 5/5/05, D3, cited by Larry Horn on ADS-L, 5 May 2005)
  • “Cities trying to figure out how to make due with less by Tom Robertson, Minnesota Public Radio February 21, 2003″ (link)
  • Yes, I know that 5/8 of the league will be sitting at home with their hands in their pockets, but for the remaining teams that are in the Playoffs it is due-or-die time. (eNFL bulletin board, Nov. 21, 2003)
  • Today was due or die day, as I had to get Chapter 3 of my contract project down to the boss. (Eclectic Everyday blog, Oct. 21, 2004)
  • Overall that placed them 5th in the league meaning that they will face the number four ranked UCCB Capers on Friday in a due or die match. (Memorial Univ. of Newfoundland Athletics, Nov. 3, 2004)

Presumably from people who have “due” and “do” as homophones. The idiom “make do” is pretty opaque, and I guess that “due” provides some sense of obligation to the expression.

Google provides thousands of examples, among them the fourth cite above.

[Edited on 7/20/05 to add _due or die_, with examples. This manifestation of the eggcorn often appears in contexts relating to a “crunch time” when something falls due.]

See also due » do.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/05/07 |

bylaw » bi-law

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Pesticide Bi-law updated March 03, 2005. ZONING ISSUE 2005.” (link)
  • “Proposed ASI Bi-Law Creates Controversy By Ray Duran Union Weekly.” (link)
  • “There are questions about whether the bi-laws were followed when the members were thrown out.” (link)

The third citation was provided to me on 7 May 2005 by John McChesney-Young and caused me to search Google for other occurrences of “bi-law”. I’ve labeled it as “questionable” because I’m not clear about how people who use this spelling think twoness enters into the meaning of the expression. Maybe they think there’s a first, main, set of laws, and then there’s a second set, the bi-laws. Or maybe it’s just a misspelling.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/05/07 |
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