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cost » caused

Chiefly in:   caused someone his/her job, life, etc.

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • After speaking with Mr. Webb, I had nothing but more problems and it eventually caused me my job. (Rip Off Report, Oct. 16, 2002)
  • Dan refused to assert his rights, knowing it was his HIV status that caused him his job. (Dept. of Labor and Employment, Republic of the Philippines, Jan. 5, 2004)
  • Ogbeh’s bilious letter to the president which consequently caused him his job was a grand plan by the Atiku camp to distance itself, from the perceived sins, and if you like, failures of the Obasanjo administration. (Biafra Nigeria World News, Mar. 2, 2005)
  • I have no doubt that her habit of returning items to stores in which they were not purchased, and years after acquiring them, may have caused more than one clerk a reprimand, if not a job. (New York Times Magazine, Letters, Oct. 16, 2005)
  • He feels bold to talk about Kargil, an initiative that nearly caused him his life, burial of democracy in Pakistan, and much military and diplomatic embarrassment to his nation. (The Tribune, Chandigarh, India, Apr. 1, 2005)
  • I have to admit that I found it hard to see how the intersection was truly that dangerous, but I hadn’t realized how fast he was going, and especially with the setting sun on a silver car, I can see how his recklessness caused him his life. (Michael Manning blog comment, Oct. 1, 2005)
  • One bad decision, which no one knows better than he, has caused him his family. (Talk Left blog comment, Nov. 15, 2003)
  • I lost my best friend and fiancée to an oversight in a system that caused him his freedom for life. (RemedyFind review, Aug. 15, 2002)

Analyzed or reported by:

Marked questionable, since as Arnold Zwicky writes in the ADS-L thread, this looks “blendish rather than eggcornish” — perhaps blending caused X to lose his job (etc.) with cost X his job (etc.). (The example from the New York Times Magazine, which sparked the ADS-L discussion, is further complicated by the coordination with caused X a reprimand.)

[Edited on 25 Oct 2005 to incorporate new examples suggested by Brenda Shaw.]

| 4 comments | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/10/17 |

exclamation » explanation

Chiefly in:   explanation mark , explanation point

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Excessive punctuation prohibited (only a single period, question mark, explanation point, etc. allowed) (AME Info, advertisement specifications)
  • For a movie whose title practically begs to be followed by an explanation point, Rad is a surprisingly mellow affair. (Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, 2005)
  • I check in the setup and the USB is turned on and no IRQ conflicts. There is explanation mark next to the driver. (Dux Computer Digest forum, Feb 01, 2001)
  • Enter an explanation point (!) as the first character of the remarks line (no space) and enter the remaining remarks. (link)
  • Oh jeez, you were one away from the Epinions record for most consecutive run-on sentences ending with an explanation mark. (epinions.com, Sep 16, 2003)

Analyzed or reported by:

Some people appear to have idiosyncratic ideas about the use of this punctuation mark.

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/10/14 |

hackneyed » hack-kneed

Variant(s):  hackkneed, hack kneed

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “… Jack stumbles into a hack-kneed conspiracy that is sure to put his byline back on the front page….” (Green Apple Books, blurb for Basket Case> by Carl Hiaasen)
  • As long as one invokes the hack kneed platitudes of “national security” or “the war on terror”, there is virtually no crime that that is too extreme. (Al Jazeerah, OP-ed piece by Mike Whitney)
  • While this isn’t apparent to people who didn’t follow the production, the poor pacing the hack-kneed editing creates IS a apparent, and is damaging. (Amazon customer review, July 15, 2005)
  • Bukowski seems real anathema however, his works putting the lie to the previous pair’s hackkneed chapters. (Barnes & Noble customer review, January 22, 2003)
  • Thanks for the regular expression help, though. Works better than the hack-kneed stuff I was doing ^^. (Gamon software forum (AU), Mar 31, 2004)

At this point, Google only has about 175 hits for ‘hack-kneed’, many on blogs or book-, movie-, or tv-review pages.

The new term seems to be less an observation that the subject is overworked, and more an observation that it is somehow feeble, or ‘weak in the knees’.

[Draft edited and posted by CW, 2005/10/14]

| Comments Off link | entered by Barbara, 2005/10/14 |

clique » click

Classification: English – cross-language

Spotted in the wild:

  • The young girl who knows that she is the hottest thing in her click announces that they are leaving. She confidentially turns her back on them and walks away. (link)
  • Because of her intrigue for technology and enchantment of mythology, Cindy was noted in her click as The Teckie. (link)
  • Their group was very popular in school. Nancy was the youngest one Pam had ever accepted in her click. These were the cheerleaders and the glamour types. (link)

Clique’s etymology, according to OED.com:

[recent a. F. clique, not in Cotgr., but quoted by Littré of 15th c. in sense ‘noise, clicking sound’, f. cliquer to click, clack, clap. Littré says that in the modern sense it is originally the same as claque band of claqueurs. (This word has no derivative in French; in English it has originated many.)]

One of the entries for “click” is:

Anglicized form of CLIQUE (sense 1)..

This is hard because I’m not certain what this falls into exactly. The meaning that “clique” had in Old French is not far off from the primary meaningof “click” (via OED, yet again):

A slight, sharp, hard, non-ringing sound of concussion, thinner than a clack, such as is made by the dropping of a latch, the cocking of a gun, etc. Also fig.

Is this an eggcorn that the OED has documented by stating “Anglicized form of CLIQUE (sense 1)”, or what? I first noticed it on irc.perl.org#catalyst, and the search for “in his|her|your|my
|their click” came up with a lot of false positives. It does have a web presence, though (as the “Spotted in the Wild” show), but considering the information from OED and dictionary.com, I’m curious what others think.

[David Romano’s draft posted by CW, 2005/10/14. In my view this is one of those eggcorns that lead back in a circle to the original etymology. I suppose this usage of _click_ is derived from the idea that these are the people one “clicks” with. Which appears to be the actual origin of _clique,_ but it is unclear if the writers were aware of that.]

| 4 comments | link | entered by David Romano, 2005/10/14 |

ancestor » ansister

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Hi, Knitwit, You are lucky to have an ansister like Granny to teach you to spell. (guest book entry, Aug 30, 2002)
  • Please help me find out who my ansisters are. (Genealogy forum, August 05, 2004)
  • I am from upstate NY, starting to look for info on my ansistery. (Ancestry.com, Dec 30, 2000)
  • Plus I was told that I am the spiting image of my ansister, Mary Queen of Scots, and I do not want to freack people out. (Psychic and clairvoyant forum, Jan 25, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/10/14 |
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