passed » past

Chiefly in:   past away

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • The Vatican says Pope John Paul II after developing a high fever has past away. (link)

Death marking off the past…

Edited by Ben Zimmer: Marked questionable, for the same reasons discussed by Arnold Zwicky regarding past » passed:

Larry Horn noted [on the American Dialect Society mailing list], “this one is endemic, as is its mirror-image (“past” for “passed”).” And I added, “indeed. and it’s hard to tell whether these are eggcornic or just spelling errors. the semantics is close, and they were originally the same word. see MWDEU on ‘passed, past’.”

| Comments Off link | entered by Sravana Reddy, 2005/07/31 |

one(-)off » one(-)of

Classification: English – off «» of

Spotted in the wild:

  • “I was under the impression it was a one of fee not an annual one.” (link)
  • “Perhaps, rather predictably, the mainstream media coverage of WSF portrayed it as a one-of event.” (link)
  • “I worked out a lot and am getting better, its a brilliant price for a one of payment to have your personal trainer for life.” (link)

I came across this one a week ago when my friend Ken Rudolph offered “one-off” as an eggcorn for “one of” ‘one-time, unique’ (which he took to be a shortening of “one of a kind”); he had considerable difficulty accepting my claim that “one-off” (which made no sense to him) was the original. (In comments on this site, Arthraey Angosii similarly identified “one-off” as the innovation, though Nigel Pond countered that it was the correct version.)

Nevertheless, the OED has the adjective “one-off” from 1934 and the noun from 1947, and has (as yet) no entry for “one of” (in the relevant sense).

My thanks to Chris Waigl for figuring out how to search for cites on this one and offering me the products of this search.

| 5 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/07/31 |

overdue » overdo

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “… she is always reminding Gary of how depressed he is, in the nagging way of an editor inquiring to her writer about a much overdo book.” (link)
  • “… Bob Smithers who in 1867 bought up land in the South by paying the overdo taxes and became a rich man.” (link)
  • “… buying the calculator from the library was cheaper than paying an overdo fine?” (link)

Yet another member of the “due” / “do” family; see “due” >> “do” and “do” >> “due” and “undue” >> “undo” (which also covers “undo” >> “undue”). In this case, some people seem to have discerned a component of ‘do too much’ in the semantics of “overdue”.

As with “undue” >> “undo”, the reverse substitution is also occasionally attested, at least in the verb-object combination “overdue exercise” for “overdo exercise”:

Do not overdue exercise, if your dog is exhausted and begins to get weaker and goes down. This is not productive. (link)

… in the gym about 30 minutes. I think there’s a point where you can overdue exercise, especially aerobic exercise. (link)

| 2 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/07/31 |

slather » smother

Chiefly in:   smother on

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “A huge thank you to X, Y, Z and W for squeezing into their kayaks and smothering on the sun block for their 58-mile, two-day race…” ("Positive Interest", newsletter of the HIV/AIDS charity Waverley Care, reported by Findlay)
  • “Smother on crackers or toasted French bread for a March Madness appetite pleaser! Raisin Apricot Chutney…” (link)
  • “Make sure you smother on moisturiser everyday, especially after exfoliating.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Bill Findlay (e-mail of 28 July 2005)

Pretty clearly a blend of “slather on” and “smother with/in”. What makes it somewhat eggcorn-like is the substitution of the relatively frequent verb “smother” for the rare and specialized verb “slather”. And the fact that it’s modestly frequent.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/07/31 |

keel » kill

Chiefly in:   kill over (and die)

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • It is with sadness that I report that Molly, the Belgian, crossed the Rainbow Bridge on Sunday September 28. She killed over and was gone before her huge body hit the ground. (TIER rescue)
  • I think my hair would just kill over and die if I did not use your Thermal Protector. (Healthy Hair Plus)
  • He killed over and fell. His body seized about for a while until it stopped. (debateforums.net)
  • You can keep working at your 8:00 to 5:00 job for someone else and earning a meager amount until you kill over and die one day. (link)
  • My computer killed over, and when i brought her back I was stuck in pemanent 256 colors. (link)
  • I can’t go back and tell her she royally fucked me over, because 1: I’m “the good child”. I’m not suppose to do anything to cause her any more fucking stress. 2: It would cause some stress and with my luck, she’d just kill over or blow her brains out. (yaoiville.org, December 24, 2001)

Analyzed or reported by:

| 2 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/07/29 |
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