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cart » cat

Chiefly in:   put the cat before the horse

Classification: English – idiom-related – /r/-dropping

Spotted in the wild:

  • The feeling of the people is that the police stinks and it is rotten. You, within days of assuming the leadership of the force, announced what you regard as your reform programmes. Isn’t it like putting the cat before the horse? Why didn’t you carry out internal purge and cleansing first before this outward approach? (NigerianMuse, February 06, 2005)
  • A population policy that is not predicated on the result of a credible census, in our view, is tantamount to putting the cat before the horse. (THISDAYOnLine.com, Nov. 16, 2004)
  • Before deregulation, pundits had expected the Obasanjo government to put the nations infrastructures into good working order if not for anything to make the deregulation effective, unfortunately the present arrangement is akin to putting the cat before the horse. (Max Uba : Deregulation and the Empty Jerry Can, (Niger Delta Congress))
  • But perhaps to expect that the Attorney-General’s Office and the Government in general can eradicate corruption is to put the cat before the horse. (Daily Nation (Kenya), September 13, 1998)
  • I enjoyed this entry, but i think you put the cat before the horse. (Comment on online diary entry, Apr 9, 2001)

This eggcorn, which in some case might be a typo from omitting to hit one key, was reported by on the American Dialect Society mailing list by Mark Peters, who saw it in a student paper.

It seems to be most frequent in writings by people from Africa — maybe because the historical image of horse-drawn carts is less present there than in societies of European culture.

| 8 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/03/15 |

chase » cheese

Chiefly in:   cut to the cheese

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Ho! Ho! Ho! Right, nae messin about, let’s cut to the cheese and deal with the facts. The real reason Rangers lost was because Celtic fans kept hiding the ball. (Evening Times (UK), Feb 15, 2006)
  • After about thirty minutes of being asked ridiculous questions about ridiculous things (where I got my MSCE, where I got my degree, what my teachers names were, etc), they cut to the cheese: Somebody called the shop and started spreading some serious subterfuge! (Neohapsis archives, Jul 09, 2004)
  • I’m looking for a primer, cut to the cheese type of book with some examples in C or assembly as talking about real-time is much easier than getting down and dirty. (comp.realtime, Aug 17, 1993)
  • Well, to cut to the cheese - what I hope to do with this post is to start a discussion about the features I’ve suggested below and also maybe get some new thoughts on the table. (rec.games.computer.ultima.dragons, Apr 15, 2000)

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms has the following about _cut to the chase_:

> Get to the point, get on with it, as in _We don’t have time to go into that, so let’s cut to the chase_. This usage alludes to editing (cutting) film so as to get to the exciting chase scene in a motion picture. [Slang; 1920s]

I can only guess that the variant _cut to the cheese_ relies on a similar idea, only related to food: a cheese course is usually served at the end of a meal.

| 6 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/03/06 |

hominem » homonym

Chiefly in:   ad homonym

Classification: English – not an eggcorn – cross-language

Spotted in the wild:

  • “I don’t speak for the “Religious right”, nor am I sure what is meant by the “Religious right”. I am however, quite suspect of those who attach labels in order to launch ad homonym attacks in lieu of legitimate debate.” (link)
  • Argumentum ad homonym or ‘Argument against the man’ is indeed the logical fallacy of claiming what a person says is untrue simply because of who it is (as*hole) who is making the argument rather than the validity of the argument itself. (link)
  • Your response to my questions was disrespectful, ad homonym, and tangential. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

It is only very rarely that we enter non-eggcorns into the database, but I am making an exception for _ad homonym_.

First of all, homonyms — or rather, homophones, i.e. words that sound alike but aren’t necessarily spelled alike — enter into the genesis of eggcorns themselves.

Second, because the _ad homonym_ malapropism illustrates very nicely what elements are required to make an eggcorn: it is a non-standard reshaping of an established term (check!), _homonym_ and _hominem_ are pronounced nearly the same (check!), but it _isn’t_ a re-interpretation that is based on (a correct understanding of the semantics of) the target word _homonym_.

In a typical eggcorn, the writer understands the sense of the word he or she actually employs; the problem is that the use takes up the place already occupied by a different word, often part of a set phrase. Here, however, the eggcorn users don’t give any sign that they know what a homonym is. In one of the examples, the writer obviously believes that _ad homonym_ means _against the man_ in Latin. It’s the Latin that is faulty, along with the recollection of what the expression is supposed to be, precisely. (And spell-checkers might have had their bit to add, too. Case in point: the spell-checker I just used on this entry didn’t know _hominem_ and suggested _hominid_. _Ad hominid_ also yields over a hundred Google hits, compared to several thousand for _ad homonym(s)_.)

The replacement of a “complicated phrase” by another “complicated phrase” is rarely an eggcorn: often, the writer is unclear about the meaning of both, not only about the original.

| 5 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/02/26 |

marshal » martial

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Mabasha ducked into the car and punched the man on the chin. Hard enough to knock him out, but not hard enough to break his jaw. Mabasha could martial his strength when he was in control of the situation. (Henning Mankell: The White Lioness. Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson. Harvill Crime in Vintage, 2003.)
  • Jean Lambert, Green Party spokeswoman and European Parliament member, said on Friday Greens across Europe would martial their forces to blast Bush’s energy policy. (Planet ARK, May 21, 2001)
  • Jack pulled on Daniel, rolling him over onto his back. Before he could martial his next argument, warm lips pressed against his and a slick tongue worked at prying his lips apart. (Lianne Burwell: Here We Go Again, July 1999, Zine: Gatecrashers)
  • A roadwise traveler might even curl up in the tall soft grass, napping and martialing his energy - safe from would-be human saviors who might think they had a dog’s best interests at heart, but who would casually interrupt his quest forever, so that he’d be kept apart for the rest of his life from the thing he most wanted. (Travelin' Dog, August 16, 2003)

See also marshal(l) law.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/02/20 |

don » dawn

Classification: English – cot/caught merger

Spotted in the wild:

  • Prior to Governor M. Jodi Rell’s tour of the PEZ candy factory here, she was asked to dawn a blue and white trucker hat with the Pez logo emblazoned on it, so as to be in accordance with food safety laws. (Orange Bulletin, Jan 26, 2006)
  • Also attending was Director Gordon Greenberg, conceiver of Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, costume designer Thom Heyer, Set Designer Jesse Poleshuck, and casting agent Stephanie Klapper. Ms. Stein dawned a beautiful gown designed by Dario Almiron. (Broadwayworld.com, February 1, 2006)
  • Within 24 hours of dawning a Phoenix Coyotes uniform, Steven Reinprecht showed Coyote fans what they were getting in the six-foot center: A winner. (Phoenixcoyotes.com, February 3, 2006)
  • The Marines changed modes, dawned their coolest shades and stowed their traditional marching music in their back pocket. (Marine Corps News, Feb 8, 2006)
  • Inspired by the 2005 film “Brokeback Mountain.” Brokebacking refers to two cowboys who dawn cowboy hats (and/or other cowboy getup) and gay it up. (The Urban Dictionary, definition of "brokebacking")

Ben Zimmer previously entered the reverse eggcorn dawn»don (on someone) into the database. This one might make even more sense: _don_ belongs to the formal or poetic register, and the more frequent _dawn_ evokes the appearance of something (the sun).

| 3 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/02/16 |
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