The Eggcorn Database - v. 0.5

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.—dictionary.com

[Reclassified by Ben Zimmer as “not an eggcorn,” as it is best understood as a blend of _irrespective_ and _regardless_.]

One of the two word substitutions that are most frequently suggested to me as eggcorns. (The other is “flout” >> “flaunt”.) Discussed in virtually every usage dictionary, including recent ones: Garner’s Modern American Usage, Cochrane’s Between You and I, Fiske’s The Dictionary of Disagreeable English. The words are similar in both phonology and meaning, so the substitution is understandable. The usual direction of substitution has the somewhat more frequent and less specialized word, “mitigate”, replacing the somewhat less frequent and more specialized word, “militate”, but the reverse substitution also occurs. I can’t see how either direction of substitution counts as any sort of reanalysis, though, so I’ve labeled this as “not an eggcorn”.

One of the two word substitutions that are most frequently suggested to me as eggcorns. (The other is “militate” >> “mitigate”.) Discussed in virtually every usage dictionary, including recent ones: Garner’s Modern American Usage, Cochrane’s Between You and I, Brians’s Common Errors in English Usage, Fiske’s The Dictionary of Disagreeable English. (Some of these complain that the “wrong” sense of “flaunt” has made it into dictionaries.) Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage tracks complaints about it back to 1932 and gives examples going back to 1918. The words are similar in both phonology and meaning, so the substitution is understandable. The usual direction of substitution has the somewhat more frequent and less specialized word, “flaunt”, replacing the somewhat less frequent and more specialized word, “flout”, but the reverse substitution is occasionally reported. I can’t see how either direction of substitution counts as any sort of reanalysis, though, so I’ve labeled this as “not an eggcorn”.

**Note by CW:** This entry has been assigned to the “questionable” category pending further discussion: _lose»loose_ looks like a simple misspelling to me.

**Note by CW:** Error in my first note finally fixed. The discussion in the comment section and the clarifications in Arnold Zwicky’s Language Log post agree with my first reaction to this entry. To summarize: Not every misspelling that coincides with a different word than the one the writer aimed at is an eggcorn; we need some evidence that he or she had a different sense, or sense component, in mind. I don’t wish to delete the entry, since this would mean that the commentaries would disappear as well. I have therefore created a new category to mark entries that, after discussion, are found to be not of the eggcorn type.