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 |

bide » buy

Chiefly in:   buy one's time

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Sunny, the level-headed one of the four, agrees to do the show for a lack of anything else to do, at first using it to buy her time while she finds a real job. (The Celebrity Café, book review, Mar 25, 2004)
  • I’m just buying my time until I have to go get ready for work right now. (link)
  • This car is the biggest piece of unreliabile junk I’ve ever seen. I’m just buying my time until I can get another car. (alt.autos.dodge, Dec 8, 2000)
  • I will just keep doing the best I can, and buy my time until we can open up our own damn store. (link)
  • She was a Data Angel. And that meant she was an expert on lurking in the shadows, buying her time until she could make her move. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

Adrian Bailey comments:

> Buying time is figuratively possible, but it seems to have infected the expression “bide time”.

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/08/29 |

fell » fowl

Chiefly in:   one fowl swoop

Classification: English – questionable – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

The new meaning is ‘a chicken swoop’. Chickens are birds. Birds do swoop. I’m sure the intended meaning is still at least ’single’ (as in ‘a single deadly action - Oxford Concise) but I’m not sure that anyone seriously believes fowl are the most appropriate bird to convey this meaning. This must be the hen that laid the eggcorn;)

See also fell»foul.

[CW, 2005/08/29: marked as “questionable”. The substitution certainly involves a semantic reinterpretation, but phonetically, the distance between _fell_ and _fowl_ is rather a stretch.]

| 2 comments | link | entered by b166er, 2005/08/28 |

fell » foul

Chiefly in:   one foul swoop

Classification: English – questionable – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

The word ‘foul’ (offensive, noxious, unfair) could often apply to that which is ‘fell’ (fierce, ruthless, terrible, deadly). The above example relating to the forced eviction of settlers in Gaza is such an example. This coincidence of meaning and the words’ similarity in sound combined the low awareness of the word ‘fell’ creates the ideal conditions for an eggcorn.

The Concise Oxford defines ‘at one fell swoop’ as ‘in a single (deadly) action’. Popular use of the phrase and the eggcorn often draws on the ’single action’ part of the meaning only. For example, deleting all items at once from your Microsoft Office clipboard is neither offensive nor deadly. Though it can be done in one single action this swoop would be neither foul nor fell. Hence either meaning is equally [in]appropriate. The same applies to the Between The Lines example.

The Guardian Unlimited book reviewer in another example above may have quite knowingly used the eggcorn because the word foul is so appropriate in the context of a kiss and tell biography.

Media Monitors’ A Case for Ethics talks about ‘a dirty deed’ thus underlining the new meaning of the eggcorn.

In a somewhat self-referencing example, the Christian Times writer used written words improperly and thus partially destroyed some of his own good work.

See also fell»fowl.

[CW, 2005/08/29: marked as “questionable”. The substitution certainly involves a semantic reinterpretation, but phonetically, the distance between _fell_ and _foul_ is rather a stretch.]

| Comments Off link | entered by b166er, 2005/08/28 |

beck » back

Chiefly in:   back and call

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Now you can rest assured knowing that the most knowledgeable and experienced programmers are at your back end call all day, every day! 24h support from our “graveyard programmers World’s best programmers at your back and call! (link)
  • The privileges and comfort, money can buy, are yours at your back and call. (link)
  • I am told that if you do not have goons at your back and call, you simply cannot operate in the political field. (link)
  • I mean, you can’t honestly expect me to wait at your back and call for you to make yourself available, whenever that might be. (link)

David Storrs in #catalyst chatroom on irc.perl.org reported the usage of “at your back end call”. In response to the text David gave (the first portion of the first reference in “spotted in the wild”), HCoyote offered their analysis:
“No, they’re at your back…they’re about to bend you over and fuck you with sandy lube.”
I think another possibility is due to the terms of computer programming. Front end and back end are used to describe different aspects of a program, e.g., Swing (Java GUI) programming. As noticed in the first “spotted in the wild” entry, both “back end call” and “back and call” are used. Since “at his|her|my|their|your|its back end call” only has 25 ghits, all of which appear to be from web hosting companies, I think “back end call” is more of a pun for geeks, me being one.

However, the second spelling “back and call”, seems to be an eggcorn, and still fits the analysis by HCoyote. In gentler words, and in a different sense entirely, it could also come from the meaning of the sentence “I got your back.” The last reference under “spotted in the wild” especially seems to support this sense. Google returned 342 hits for “at his|her|my|their|your|its back and call”, compared to the approximately 82,800 hits for “at his|her|my|their|your|its beck and call”.

See also: beckon call, beckoned call, beacon call.

| Comments Off link | entered by David Romano, 2005/08/12 |