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date » day

Chiefly in:   up to day

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Keeping a big universal plan is nice, but it is hard to write it in the first place and even harder to keep it up to day.” (link)
  • “I will do my best to keep them up to day so check back from time to time. I will be adding and removing items as I need them.” (link)
  • “Want the most up to day information sent right to your email box?” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Wilson Gray (American Dialect Society mailing list, 19 February 2006)

Probably encouraged by the fact that if things are up to date, they’re ok to today.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2006/05/20 |

leeway » leadway

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “This business of trying to give presidents leadway doesn’t usually serve us very well.” (link)
  • “Considering that I just wrote this you’d think you’d give me some leadway here.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Mark Peters (American Dialect Society mailing list, 17 March 2006)

The nautical “lee” in “leeway” undoubtedly goes unrecognized by most modern speakers. But “lead”, in the sense of a distance out in front, more or less fits the intended meaning. And there is an idiom “lead the way” as well.

| 3 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2006/05/20 |

lambast(e) » lamblast

Variant(s):  landblast

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “And no, I don’t lamblast Clinton out of spite. In fact I don’t lamblast Clinton at all. Nor did I single him out. I mentioned Reagan as well.” (link)
  • “Humberside Police have been lamblasted for the death of a black man in their custody eight years ago …” (link)
  • “…get your facts straight before you landblast a movie and you won’t have an embarrasing review like that.” (link)
  • “She landblasted our enlisted men calling them murders while condoing abortion.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Paul Brians (Common Errors in English, "More Errors" page)
  • "bondy" on the eggcorn forum, 19 April 2006 (link)

See the entry for “lambast(e)” >> “lambash” for the motivation for this one. Brians cites it only in the form “lamblasted, landblasted”, but other verb forms are attested as well.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2006/05/20 |

lambast(e) » lambash

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “She’s been nothing but civil, but the rest of you lambash her for her views. I admit, they’re out there, but she’s entitled to them.” (link)
  • “… cited expertise about fictional and imaginary creatures, lambashed users for asking questions, and criticized the style and organization of others posts …” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Matthew Gordon (American Dialect Society mailing list, 24 March 2006)

When Matt Gordon reported this one on the ADS-L, Beverly Flanigan noted that it undoubtedly depends on the pronunciation of “lambaste” as “lambast” (both pronunciations, and in fact both spellings, are given in NOAD2 under “lambaste”). The opaque “bast” piece is then improved by being reshaped as the semantically appropriate “bash”. An alternative reshaping is with “blast” — as “lamblast” or “landblast” (q.v.).

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2006/05/20 |

godsend » god’s end

Variant(s):  gods end, gods-end

Classification: English – resyllabification

Spotted in the wild:

  • See? This lady was a Gods-end to me. How could we possibly have so many interests in common? (Spring.net Geo conference, Feb. 22, 2000)
  • You know, in a way it’s a god’s end. That I lost my password. This made me to go on a little vacation. (The Iraq War Was Wrong blog, Apr. 16, 2005)
  • Aceh is a source of income, a place to loot. The tsunami is a gods end for them; the foreign aid is a new source of loot. (The News (Pakistan), June 7, 2005)
  • For my work, there’s a clear and obvious need to know if this machine is useful - and the try-60-days program is a gods-end. (The Daily Irrelevant blog comment, Mar. 26, 2006)
  • My one comes with built in Speed Camera alerts, so is a god’s end when your not in a familiar area, not that I speed! (Airliners.net forum, May 12, 2006)

Analyzed or reported by:

This is perhaps semantically justified by thinking of the thing/event bringing good fortune not as something sent from God, but as an “end” (result or outcome) of God.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2006/05/20 |
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