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object » option

Chiefly in:   money is/was no option

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • “If money was no option: I would still be doing what I’m doing: being a singer, a performer, an entertainer.” (link)
  • “What would you be eating for dinner if money was no option?” (link)
  • “money is no option here, i dont care how much it costs, i want her to have a great night.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Wilson Gray (American Dialect Society mailing list, 3 October 2005)

Wilson Gray quoted, “We were taken to parties in stretch limos with drivers, free drinks,
and everything. Money was no option.” And I was off on a Google web search, which netted huge numbers of relevant occurrences of “money is/was no option”.

The contribution of “object” to the semantics of “money is/was no object” — (the availability of) money is no barrier, meaning money doesn’t have to be considered, any amount can be spent — seems to be hard for many people to tease out, and they settle on “no option” (conveying, I guess, that there’s no need to choose on the basis of monetary considerations) as making more sense.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/10/03 |

I'll be darned » all be darned

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • “There are zillions of SPAM concoctions on the internet - everything from Rack of Spam to Spammus to Spam soup. But all-be-darned if I couldnt find one for SPAM cake.” (E-mail to Jeff Shaumeyer, quoted on his blog (bearcastle.com/blog/).)
  • “…you know, all be darned, I have never seen that before. never. I know the rule, … I’ve known it all My Life, and all be darned, there it Is.” (link)
  • “… well all be darned if that didnt work!!! Thx alot!!!! not understanding how it is working cause line 28 and 29 are the else statements for setting the …” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Chris Ambidge, David Fenton (Usenet newsgroup soc.motss, 2-3 October 2005)

Hundreds of Google web hits, some (like the first cite above) with hyphens, most without. The first cite was quoted on soc.motss by Chris Ambidge, and he and David Fenton both immediately realized the possibly eggcornic character of the expression. (This quotation also illustrates overnegation; the meaning expressed is one that would be rendered in standard English as “I’ll be darned if I could find one for SPAM cake” ‘I couldn’t find one for SPAM cake’.)

The vowel of the contraction “I’ll” is often monophthongized, even by speakers (like me) who don’t generally monophthongize /aj/. This yields something that could easily be interpreted as a variant of “darn it all”.

There are some parallel occurrences of “all be damned” to be found among the many irrelevant hits — for instance: “It may be all style and shock value, but
all be damned if it doesn’t look good.” (link)

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/10/03 |

windfall » winfall

Chiefly in:   winfall

Classification: English – final d/t-deletion

Spotted in the wild:

  • There’s no issue of taxes here, the city has a winfall of revenue. (link)
  • What may seem like a winfall to the employee of having an extra $50 in their paycheck every payday, puts not only the employee but the company at risk. (link)

The literal reference in the original is to ripened fruit falling to the ground when the wind blows. The eggcorn has become increasingly common, not only because “win” fits so logically, but also because it is used (probably originally as a pun) as the name of several state and other lotteries in the US.

| Comments Off link | entered by benevides, 2005/10/02 |
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