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rear » reel

Chiefly in:   reel its (ugly) head

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Or, is there a hidden agenda that is only now beginning to reveal itself and reel its ugly head?” (Michnews.com via Reason Magazine, Jan. 20, 2004)
  • Bradbury’s most popular novel still resonates today as anti-intellectualism once again reels its ugly head. (Vue Weekly, Feb. 24, 2005)
  • As much as I want to disagree (guns-blazing, intellectual warfare imagery abounds), realpolitik reels its ugly head. (Ben Wyatt, Mar. 24, 2006)
  • That social system that appeared to be encouraging in the beginning, reeled its head and became an area of destruction. (Gabriel Zeigler, Dec. 9, 2006)
  • Desperation is reeling its ugly head. (CNN Political Ticker comment, May 22, 2008)
  • ROMNEY’S INNER JACKASS REELS ITS HEAD AGAIN (TPM Cafe Reader Post, June 26, 2008)
| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2008/06/26 |

integrate » intergrade

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Practitioners may contest the notion of intergrading traditional practices and western practices (Student paper)
| Comments Off link | entered by rbersten, 2008/05/24 |

arrears » the rears

Chiefly in:   in the rears

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • So now a total of $120 a week is being garnished from his paycheck. He called the mainline for the court for his case, and they then stated that this additional money is for in the rears payments. (TheLaw.com forum)
  • He is so far in the rears he owes over 12,000. (Delaware Moms forum)
  • Child support order was in 1991 and he is now 30,000 in the rears. (Lawguru)
  • These Dead Beat Parents didn’t get $30,40,$60,000 in the rears over NIGHT !!! (Stateline.org comment)
  • Whether Delbert is in the rears regarding child support payments is a personal matter between us and is not for public debate or inquiry. (Rip-Off Report comment)
| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2007/12/12 |

slake » slack

Chiefly in:   slack (one's) thirst

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Slacking thirst… Regularly hydrate yourself. Sip water between sets, aiming to drink at least one glass every fifteen minutes you are training. …” (link)
  • “Forget about the lovely ales they brewed in London until last summer. Goodbye, Britannia. I shall seek out other places to slack my thirst! …” (link)
  • “Just like the hat to keep the sun off, the dark glasses to reduce the glare, the sunblock to stop you burning, the drink to slack your thirst, you will fit …” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Phil Cleary (American Dialect Society mailing list, 19 May 2007)

Cleary’s original report: BBC America’s print and online catalogues contain the following blurb for the Guinness Toucan T-shirt: “Dublin’s most famous brewery has been slacking thirsts for more than 175 years….”

I replied on ADS-L at the time: The problem is that the OED has the verb “slack” ‘to slake (one’s thirst)’ from 1631 on, and that transitive “slack” ‘reduce, diminish’
would make sense with the object “thirst”. And in fact “slack” and “slake” are developments from the same OE verb. So this isn’t a very clear case. I suspect that the idiom “slake one’s thirst” has been eggcorned more than once to “slack” (using a much more common word), but it’s hard to verify this.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2007/10/21 |

reckless » wreckless

Chiefly in:   wreckless driving, wreckless driver

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • “I was charged with wreckless driving on 9/28/05. I was traveling down Rte 202 in NH. … My question…is this a legitimate wreckless driving charge?” (link)
  • “im not bragging about being a wreckless driver, i know i drive wrecklessly.” (link)
  • “I got a ticket for speeding in a school zone also. It was actually one mile under wreckless driving.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • "scarequotes", on Eggcorn Forum, 8 November 2005 (link)
  • Paul Brians (link)

Back in 2005, “scarequotes” noted: “Wreckless driving” pulls up 24,500 Google hits, though some of these are obviously wordplay (“wreckless driving” referring to futuristic cars that won’t crash). “Wreckless driver” pulls up 1760.

You can also find a fair number of cites for “wreckless abandon”, but an awful lot of them look like wordplay.

As Laura Staum Casasanto noted when she sent me the third example above, there’s a problem with the meaning: understood literally, “wreckless” is almost the opposite of “reckless”. So this might just be a “demi-eggcorn” reshaping, in which the unfamiliar element reck (historically related to reckon) is re-spelled as a familiar element, wreck, without significantly improving the meaning. There is that connection between driving and wrecks, though.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2007/10/21 |
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