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bald » bold

Chiefly in:   bold-faced lie

Variant(s):  boldface, bold face

Classification: English – nearly mainstream

Spotted in the wild:

  • ACU Challenges John Kerry to Prove His Whopper Is Not a Lie
    The candidate’s claim that he met with foreign leaders looks like boldfaced lie, says ACU’s Lessner (The American Conservative Union, Headline)
  • Bush = Bold-faced liar (link)
  • Those sneaky, seemingly straight shooting, look you in the eye, and bold-faced lie people. We’ve all met one. And even when every instinct is telling you they’re lying, we stand there, nodding and smiling and buying their lies. (link)

People appear to have lost their trust in the veracity of news reporting. Lies are even expected in the boldface letters of headlines, as it is illustrated by this Boondocks cartoon (which uses the term as a pun).

_Bold-faced_ has made it into WordNet, which lists the following glosses:

>audacious, barefaced, bodacious, bold-faced, brassy, brazen, brazen-faced, insolent — (unrestrained by convention or propriety; “an audacious trick to pull”; “a barefaced hypocrite”; “the most bodacious display of tourism this side of Anaheim”- Los Angeles Times; “bold-faced lies”; “brazen arrogance”; “the modern world with its quick material successes and insolent belief in the boundless possibilities of progress”- Bertrand Russell)

A variant of the original idiom is _bare-faced lie_. It is, according to this thread from the WORD-L mailing list, used in Britain, but also in parts of the United states. Just like _bald-faced_, _bare-faced_ lends itself to eggcornological reinterpretation and therefore gets an entry of its own.

| 3 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/13 |

toe » tow

Chiefly in:   tow the line

Classification: English – nearly mainstream

Spotted in the wild:

  • Rice urged other world leaders to join Washington’s campaign to get “states that continue to support rejectionists and terrorists (to) stop doing that,” while dangling the prospect of further sanctions against Syria if it failed to tow the line. (Reuters, February 8, 2005)
  • Conservative County councillors Brian Gadd and Ron Dyason spoke of their dislike of the scheme and pledged to fight against it, rather than tow the party line. (Bexhill Today, 11 February 2005)
  • Their one-sided, blatant attempts to pressure local cable companies were unethically touted as news on their local broadcasts, with “stories” that were so self-serving I felt pity for the anchors and reporters forced to tow the company line. (link)
  • Lesi is towing the line in Kotobalavu’s direction in support of the 2000 coup. (Fiji Times, February 06, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

_Tow the line_ may well be one of the reshapings that will soon be considered acceptable in standard English. It is so common that it is easier to find salient examples in journalistic writing than on the general-purpose web.

Michael Quinion at Word Wide Words explains the original form, _toe the line_:

> Toe the line is the survivor of a set of phrases that were common in the nineteenth century; others were toe the mark, toe the scratch, toe the crack, or toe the trig. In every case, the image was that of men lining up with the tips of their toes touching some line. They might be on parade, or preparing to undertake some task, or in readiness for a race or fight.

The “lining up for a race or fight” metaphor has been obscured, and a new, nautical imagery has been grafted on the expression, thus changing the spelling. In particular when a blend with compounds like _party line_ occurs, the original metaphor slips farther into the background: a party line is not the kind of line that can be toed. And then it is but a step towards towing the line in a particular direction.

An example for the ideas that underpin the semantic reshaping that has taken place is provided in this commentary, on a blog, by a person named Rog:

> Okay, hang on. I’m pretty certain that “toe/tow the line” has a dual etymology, both with a nautical background. Like many such phrases, the meaning has changed over time, giving it multiple connotations.
>
> I don’t doubt that the original was likely “toe”, since that form of punishment (making a sailor stand on deck for long periods of time) is near ancient though undoubtably still in use today.
>
> “Tow the line”, however, is closer to the meaning which people usually are aiming for: to tow in a rope, usually while docking smaller vessels. It implies taking up an open task, doing your share, etc.. as opposed to punishment for a lack of duty.

A very convincing argument, but pure invention, without any foundation in the history of English.

(See also tow » toe.)

| 9 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/11 |

bated » baited

Chiefly in:   baited breath

Classification: English – nearly mainstream

Spotted in the wild:

  • Glaring suspiciously at Ron, Professor McGonagall pushed the portrait back open and went outside. The whole common room listened with baited breath. (J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Bloomsbury, London, 1999, p. 291)
  • A big gain in the 2006 runs for gubernatorial and congressional seats will bolster the confidence of Democrats, but I’m sure they remember the obvious in America: Democratic Congress, Republican President… and vice versa. So, with the baited breath of Wiley Coyotes, they pore over blueprints of probability as they seek troubleshooting, eight-ball candidates – the whole exciting miasma of an ultimate victory for the UN’s New World Order. (Enter Stage Right, January 31, 2005)
  • NASA boffins are this week watching satellite images with baited breath to see what will happen when an iceberg smashes into a glacier in Antartica. (The Sun, February 9, 2005)
  • While everyone waits with baited breath, to see if Terrell Owens’ Willis Reed impression is enough to inspire his Philadelphia Eagles teammates to victory over the heavily-favored New England Patriots in today’s Super Bowl, other games are being played in the NFL. (WEBCommentary, February 6, 2005)
  • Conference chief executive John Moules told BBC Sport: “It could affect us and we’re waiting with baited breath.” (BBC Sport, 2 February, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

| 4 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/10 |

home » hone

Chiefly in:   hone in on

Classification: English – nearly mainstream

Spotted in the wild:

  • French hone in on Egypt crash black box signal (abs-cbn news, January 7, 2004)
  • Police hone in on site: Stillman wants new station on Robbins Road (Daily News Transcript, January 31, 2005)
  • “Performance-wise our Pontiac Grand Am and Kurt’s Chevrolet will be right there,” said Johnson. “We actually expect to be at the head of the pack. We started honing in on it toward the end of last season, but didn’t have enough time to produce all the parts and pieces that it takes to get the performance to where it needs to be. (motorsport.com, 2005-02-07)
  • With an election in the offing and opinion polls dictating their every gesture, our political masters have honed-in on immigration as a key battle-ground. (The Scotsman, 8 Feb 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

Honing the blade for a surgical strike.

Listed in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language (2000) without as much as a usage note, and in the BBC Skillswise Glossary, _hone in (on)_ is very likely to pass into the mainstream.

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993), though, calls it an “erroneous version of _home in (on)_”.

| 4 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/09 |

shoo » shoe

Chiefly in:   a shoe-in

Classification: English – nearly mainstream

Spotted in the wild:

  • A month or so back, when it seemed that Mahmoud Abbas was a shoe in for the leadership of the Palestinians, I opined that based on some comments he’d made (which seemed to support terrorism and terrorists) I wasn’t at all sure there’d be much of a change in the Palestinian/Israeli situtation. (link)
  • Eagles are a shoe-in to host NFC Championship (Gloucester County Times, January 16, 2005)
  • WE’VE been expecting you, Mr Scott. Dougray Scott, the fridge salesman’s son from Glenrothes, was widely considered a shoe-in for the role of James Bond, and even bookmakers had closed betting on the issue. (Scotland on Sunday, 6 Feb 2005)
  • Indeed, even sometime critic Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s campaign, was saying on CNN Friday that Dean is practically a shoe-in. (newsday.com, February 8, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

This eggcorn is very common in journalistic writing, but the occurrences tend to be caught later on.

| 3 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/02/09 |
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