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mince » mix

Chiefly in:   mix words

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • He certainly didn’t mix words as he described the ups and downs of the acting profession. (link)
  • He didn’t mix words, pull any punches. (link)
  • You don’t mix words at your concerts. (link)
  • P: I think it’s because we’re a very emotional, passionate band, we don’t mince words, we don’t mix words, I mean if I got something to say, generally I say it. (link)

Watching “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” today (on a channel that fuzzed people’s mouths as they swore) sent me to imdb.com to read about the cast, in one of whose biographies I found the above “He certainly didn’t mix words…” I went to Google and found only thirty uses of “didn’t mix words,” but several of those included an immediate rephrasing, such as the quoted “didn’t mix words, pull any punches” that suggest a variation on the phrase “didn’t mince words.” “Don’t mix words comes back with many uses that are distinctly along the lines of “don’t mix words and “, but some are also, as quoted at the Christianity Today site, of the mince/mix type.

This *feels* like an eggcorn to me. I read overtones of “mixing it up” - fighting, whether physically or verbally - in the usage, which goes with the slightly aggressive (pugnacious?) attitude someone who doesn’t mince words might have. I also wonder if there are any elements of mixing as used in music - that words are mixed in rap songs, so there can be people who do or do not mix them. Ah - and in one quote, both phrases are used: “we don’t mince words, we don’t mix words…” - if reported correctly (it’s in an interview), does the speaker see the phrases as distinct?

I can’t find any “mixmeat” hits that seem to mean “mincemeat”. It looks like words are mixed, or not.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ann Burlingham, 2006/11/20 |

foolproof » fullproof

Variant(s):  full-proof

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Plus, there’s no “if” about it…we’ve definitely executed innocent people. It would be impossible to have a 100% fullproof system. (link)
  • how on earth can you extract information from somebody who maintains a poker face throughout the *entire* game? You can’t, this is precisely where the use of poker-faces lie. It’s fullproof if consistently maintained and this is precisely what these guys do… (link)
  • I should add that this program is not fullproof but has been working perfectly for me (link)
  • This classification method is however still being challenged, and does not seem to be fullproof. (link)
  • I usually forward the bill to the vendor along with a form letter asking the vendor to contact the publisher and make sure the billing address is the vendors and not ours. However, it isn’t a long term solution since it does cost us postage and is not fullproof. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Bogus Trumper, coopermktg, genthrob (link)

Note 2008-12-29. Michael Quinion notes on the ADS-L mailing list that this eggcorn can be traced quite far into the past:

> My son gave me a big collection of old SF magazines for Christmas. On the back cover of issue No 5 of Nebula Science Fiction for Autumn 1953 is an
advert: “A Full-proof Insurance Policy”.

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/10/26 |

exorbitant » exuberant

Chiefly in:   exuberant prices

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • As 0% balance transfer deals dwindle, cards that offer extremely low rate of interest for the lifetime of the balance are ahead in the popularity stakes. These deals allow cardholders to pay off their credit card debt over a long period of time without accruing more debt due to exuberant interest rates. (CardGuide.co.uk, September 20, 2006)
  • The Motion Sound KP-200S: Not Worthy Of It’s Exuberant Price (Epinions.com, Sep 04, 2005)
  • Titled Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, the doc focuses on the private corporations charging exuberant prices for goods in Iraq (a six-pack of Coca-Cola for $45?), much of which is, in the end, paid for by American taxpayers. (cinematical, blog entry, Sep 19, 2006)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Nancy Friedman (on her blog, and in the Eggcorm forums)

This astonishing substitution has aspects of an eggcorn, with the adjective “exaggerated” providing for the link between the sense of the original and the reshaping. But a case could be made for this being more like a malapropism, or for the meanings of _exorbitant_ and _exuberant_ collapsing into one when costs and prices are concerned — at least for some people. This is why I have marked it as questionable for the time being.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/10/16 |

foment » ferment

Chiefly in:   ferment trouble/fears/unrest

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Indonesia’s recalled ambassador, Hamzah Thayeb, believes Australia’s Uniting Church with partners in Papua, is fermenting trouble in the province. (ABC.Net.au, 20 April , 2006, The World Today transcript)
  • In a special announcement made on the state-owned Kaduna State Radio Corporation (KSMC) Mr Ibhaze said his command was reliably informed that trouble makers wanted to ferment trouble either yesterday or immediately after today’s Jumat prayers pointing out that the aim was to cause violence and destruction. (allAfrica.com, September 23, 2006)
  • But if he is denied the throne, will he rebel and ferment a civil war of his own? (Nick Cohen in Guardian Unlimited, October 3, 2004)

_Foment_ having become obscure and somewhat formulaic in its usage, the verb _ferment_ and its vivid imagery of slightly disgusting, bubbling and creative chaos is there to fill the gap.

With thanks to Bernhard Rohrer, who pointed out this eggcorn.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/10/13 |

to-do » ta-do

Variant(s):  ta do, tado, ta-doo, ta doo, tadoo

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “A festuche is a brohaha or a big deal or a tado.” (link)
  • “Plus we’ve both been married before and knew that we didn’t want a big tadoo.” (link)
  • “The local media made a big ta do about the opening of the dealership and the test drives they offered.” (link)
  • “Plus, it’s all pretty much taken care of by the time we arrive and I don’t have to make a big ta-do out of it.” (link)
  • “Out in PA, there’s a big ta-doo over hiring more police. WHAT THE FUCK FOR?!” (link)
  • “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, we had a big ta doo with NTL and had solicitor letters etc but in the end they backed down …” (link)

The first cite I came across in writing Language Log posting of 7 September 2006 on an entirely different subject. As I said there, “ta-do” and its variants seem to have “to-do” reshaped to echo the “ta-DAH” that introduces some big announcement, imitating a trumpet flourish. Googling on <"a big tado"> gets 43 raw webhits, most of them relevant; the more clearly onomatopoetic <"a big tadoo"> gets even more, 95; <"a big ta-do">, with its visual separation into two parts, gets 267, of both “a big ta-do” and “a big ta do”; and <"a big ta-doo"> gets 54 more, of both “a big ta-doo” and “a big ta doo”.

[Added 15 September 2006: Doug Kenter suggests that “whoopdedoo” might have contributed to the reshaping.]

| 3 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2006/09/08 |
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