The Eggcorn Database - v. 0.5

The very common substitution of _quick claim_ (or _quickclaim_) _deed_ for the technical term _quitclaim deed_ qualifies as a very straightforward (mortgage-related) legal eggcorn.

Wikipedia informs us that a quitclaim deed is

> […] a document by which a person (the “grantor”) disclaims any interest the grantor may have in a piece of real property and passes that claim to another person (the grantee). A quitclaim deed neither warrants nor professes that the grantor’s claim is valid. By contrast, the deeds normally used for real estate sales (called grant deeds or warranty deeds, depending on the jurisdiction) contain guarantees from the grantor to the grantee that the title is clear. The exact nature of the warranties vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Quitclaim deeds are sometimes used for transfers between family members, gifts, placing personal property into a business entity, or to eliminate clouds on title, or in other special or unusual circumstances.

For the non-legal reader, this seems to mean that the term is used to describe a particularly light-weight, “quick”, way of signing property over to other people. Or in the words of our contributor Marian Neudel: “Presumably the rationale is that it is faster to process one of these than several other types of deeds, most notably warranty deeds. A quitclaim, after all, is merely a way of conveying all the rights you own in a piece of property — if any — rather than certifying that you actually own something worth conveying.”

The eggcorn is also easily understood phonetically: The hypothetical consonant cluster [tkl] in the middle of _quitclaim_ easily morphs into [ʔkl], even for speakers of dialects that do not generally realize final [t] as a glottal stop ([ʔ]). The latter would be the case for significant numbers of British English speakers (who pronounce even the word _quit_ as [kwɪʔ] instead of using the dictionary-pronunciation [kwɪt]).

_Skimp milk_ for _skimmed_ (or _skim_) _milk_ is not a very frequent substitution, but one that immediately makes sense. As Pat Schwieterman writes in his forum post, “Skimmed milk does skimp on the fat compared to whole milk.”

As a caveat, there are indications that some speakers intentionally employ _skimp_ for jocular derision:

>Just last week we had an interesting conversation in our office about skim milk. Names such as ‘white water’ and ’skimp milk’ were mentioned. For people who grew up drinking whole milk, the idea of changing to skim milk, also known as fat-free milk, is unpleasant. (link)

The cites above, however, do sound genuine, and the first two appear in texts that do not use a jocular tone. (I am less certain about cite number three.)

Joe Krozel’s post to the Eggcorn Forum already provides a very exhaustive investigation into the substitution of _physical_ for _fiscal_.

Acoustically, the two adjectives are easy to conflate: the unstressed second syllable of _physical_ is not very salient. Indeed, we find examples of online writers expressing their annoyance about this conflation in speech. Note that in the following example, it is entirely unclear of the person who pronounces _fiscal_ like _physical_ would also spell the first like the second:

> I once had a supervisor that could not correctly pronounce “fiscal”. She always said, “Physical year.” If I had respected, trusted, or liked her, I would have shrugged it off as just one of those things that makes us human. Inside it only made me want to yell, Use phonetics woman! It’s two syllables not three! I’m from the South too and that is not an automatic license to add an extra syllable to every word. (link)

To quote from Joe’s post on how to possibly rationalize _physical year_:

>The use of “physical” in the EGGCORN “physical year” is a reference to the “physical” set of dates which define the assessment year (different from the calendar year). One instance where a communicator might use the eggcorn “physical year” as a naive substitute for “fiscal year” is when he is NOT AWARE that the word “fiscal” exists for that purpose. This usage seems to invoke the definition of “physical” meaning “of or relating to the body” in the figurative sense of the body of dates that define the year in question.

On the other hand, let’s note that some writers use _physical year_ in the opposite sense: to refer to the calendar year, and to distinguish it from any culturally determined, business, or indeed fiscal year whose start and end do not fall on January 1.

* _This change was implimentated in the middle of August instead of at the end of the physical year._ (link)
* _Board Member, Jean Louis Bosquet made a motion to change HAES fiscal year from the physical year._ (link)

A Google search for instances of “in the trawl(s) of” (and obvious variants) taking the place of “in the thrall(s) of” (etc.) turned up only the cited instance, among hundreds of instances (most, but not all, using “trawl” in the singular) related to fishing either literally or metaphorically. However, both “entrawled” and “entrawling”, taking the place of “enthral(l)ed” and “enthral(l)ing”, appear to be very common.

The semantic explication of this egg-corn that pops into my head is that that which is “in the trawl(s)” of a fishing boat has, literally, been “caught up”. The third occurrence cited is one of several dozen from the .ie domain; presumably those are non-semantically reinforced by, if not entirely due to, /θ/ -> /t/ substitution.