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told » total

Chiefly in:   all total

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • All total there are 13 Improvs and there are plans to open five more in the coming year, says Tony Baldino, president of Comedy Club Inc., the company that owns the Improvs. (Baltimore Sun, Jan. 10, 2002)
  • There are also some good places for a quick sandwich, but all total, there are not that many restaurants in the four-block area we call downtown. (New Bern Sun Journal, NC, Nov 18,2004)
  • Also Friday, there will be a one mixed breed race and four thoroughbred races. All total there are 46 entries. (Daily Interlake, MT, Aug 18, 2005)
  • All total, the number of Guard personnel in the stricken states is about 40,000. (AP via Yahoo, Sep 4, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

Possibly a blend of all told and in total.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/05 |

threw » through

Chiefly in:   through (someone) for a loop

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Although engineering school through him for a loop, van de Walle found that he excelled as a graphic artist. (Space.com, Mar. 11, 2004)
  • “Who book?” means whose book and at first it through me for a loop, until I saw the kid holding a book. (Language Hat comment, Sep. 13, 2004)
  • The first surgery back in 1984, however, through Bay for a loop for quite awhile, especially given the fact that he is an artist. (Main Street Newspapers, Nov. 24, 2004)

Possibly influenced by the image of going through a loop.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/04 |

gall » gaul

Variant(s):  Gaul

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “You lie whenever you feel like it, try to impersonate others, try to assassinate the character of truly stellar human beings like [NN] and [NN] and then have the gaul to accuse others of your behavior.” (link)
  • “Next, there are some who assume because I, again, have the “unmitigated gaul” to ask “Why?” that I’m out to get them.” (link)
  • “And they have the gaul to yell for Rove’s head? I am looking forward to the day when they frog march Durbin to Jail for this one!” (link)
  • “I also had the joy of a particularly fat little Czech rider landing on top of me, he then had the Gaul to shout at me, …” (link)
  • “How STUPID is it to look at the hundreds of awards [Michael Jackson] has won of a span of 30 years […] and **have the omnitigated gaul** to call him the “self-proclaimed, professed, or styled” King Of Pop?” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • David Fenton (Usenet newsgroup soc.motss, 1 September 2005)

Most modern speakers use “gall” only in the idiom “have the (unmitigated) gall” and closely related expressions, in which the word “gall” is entirely opaque. Substituting “gaul” improves things some, presumably via an allusion to the fabled haughtiness and impoliteness of the French. The French connection is especially clear in the examples with capitalized “Gaul”.

Googling on “unmitigated gaul” yields a fair number of legitimate examples, plus lots of entertaining deliberate plays on words. There are hundreds of apparently legitimate web occurrences of “have the gaul” and “had the gaul”.

I hadn’t come across this one until David Fenton pointed it out on soc.motss, and it doesn’t seem to be in the standard compendia of errors. But now Elizabeth Zwicky tells me that she encounters it on mailing lists fairly often. The cite with “unmitigated” reshaped to “omnitigated” was unearthed by Chris Waigl.

[Later the same day: Fenton has now noted a huge number of occurrences of “gaul/Gaul bladder” for “gall bladder”. For instance:

Comments. gaul bladder polyps. … I HAVE MANY LARGE POLYPS IN MY GAUL BLADDER. ONE SURGEON
SAID THAT IF I DO NOT TAKE OUT MY GAUL BLADDER, I WILL GET CANCER. … (link)

Simple spelling error, with a modestly common word replacing a really uncommon word? Or is there some imputation of Frenchness? Only one legitimate-looking occurrence of “wormwood and gaul”, but then few people these days know the biblical expression.]

| 1 comment | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/09/03 |

Cadillac » Catillac

Classification: English – questionable – /t/-flapping

Spotted in the wild:

  • “:rolleyes: now, WHO drives a catillac out of gas on a side road?? :rolleyes: anyhoo ~ i believe they were casing our house. from the road, you couldnt tell …” (link)
  • “Cadillac ‘Pink’ One of the most escentric and outrageous cars within our entire fleet, the famous 1959 Pink Catillac.” (link)
  • “Vincent then heads to boost a Catillac, but unbeknownst to him, … Vincent, speechless, jumps in the Catillac but is immediately stopped by Julius, …” (link)
  • “CUT TO Lowell speeding up and down the street of a gated off community in his pink Catillac, narrowly missing a few kids that are busy playing hop-scotch. …” (link)

A Google web search on “Catillac” yields thousands of examples, most of them irrelevant: Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats (television show of the 80s), other bits of cat-related word play, the Catillac variety of pear, horses named Catillac, people who’ve chosen “catillac” as their username, and so on. Of the remaining examples, some are probably just misspellings, as in the case of the writer (above) who produces both “Cadillac” and “Catillac” in a short description, and also spells “eccentric” as “escentric” (which probably reflects an actual pronunciation). But I suspect that some of the examples arise from an association between Cadillac cars and men who might be referred to either as “cool cats” or as “fat cats”. The t/d confusion stems, of course, from intervocalic flapping in some English dialects.

See also Cadillac converter.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/09/03 |

chaise longue » chaise lounge

Classification: English – cross-language

Spotted in the wild:

  • An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. (AP, September 1, 2005)
  • Try this: A little cartoon of a Ford Expedition in the left lane with a guy on top sprawled out in a chaise lounge, roasting a bratwurst over a fire, yakking on a BlackBerry, as traffic piles up behind him. Caption: DON’T BE A LANE CAMPER! (Seattle Times, September 1, 2005)
  • “It’s kind of sad,” Walter Crispell, 73, said while taking a break last week on a comfortable chaise lounge on the store’s second floor. “After I turned 70, everything went to hell.” (Poughkeepsie Journal, August 30, 2005)

This one needs a bit of investigating. The term “chaise lounge” is used, especially in the USA, to refer both to chaise longues and to what others might call a sun lounger. images.google.com/images?… Clearly, chaise longues have existed for centuries, and three things are unclear. First, when and where the misspelling originated. Second, whether the mispronunciation began earlier, later, or at the same time. Third, when and where the sun lounger began to be named “chaise lounge”.

[CW, 2005/09/02: several examples added.]

[AZ, 2005/09/02: this one is listed in many sources on usage and errors, including Brians and MWDEU (which has a pretty detailed entry on the expression).]

| 5 comments | link | entered by dadge, 2005/09/02 |
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