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Halloween » Holloween

Classification: English – proper names

Spotted in the wild:

  • Polyurethane artificial holloween pumpkin, United States Patent 6555188 (link)
  • The next Americans Abroad is a Holloween drinks in a spooky pub (well ok, the cobwebs were already there and well… city types getting smashed can be a bit spooky). (meetup.com, Oct 2005)
  • Holloween and pumpkin carving (link)
  • Ok, so both Nike and Bape have released their Holloween edition kicks. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Kevin Marks (on IRC, Oct 30, 2005)
| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/10/30 |

will o' » willow

Chiefly in:   willow the wisp

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Armillaria mellea is not the brightest glowing species on agar culture, however on wood substrates, the mycelium is reported to glow much brighter. The phenomenon has been referred to as “foxfire” or “willow the wisp”. Armillaria is a pathogen of trees; whole forests can be wiped out he invading fungus, leaving “ghost” trees. (bioart.co.uk)
  • Notice how the woman’s face is drawn with character and subtlety and contrast this with how her lower body is only suggested in a willow-the-wisp kind of way. (Mr Whistler's Art)
  • For musicians, the willow-the-wisp of perfect sound quality is the last of the parameters that troubles us. (Musical Pointers, CD review)
  • The hushed, scurrying strings of the first subject bring a ‘willow-the-wisp’ quality evocative of the flurry of fairies’ wings. (Music Teachers (UK), online journal, 2001)
  • The letters trace an ongoing conversation in language that Emerson described as having a “willow-the-wisp quality” (Simmons 126), fragmentary and allusive as if “caught from some dream” (Simmons 1). (Janice Battiste, "A Good Aunt is More to a Poet Than a Patron: Mary Moody Emerson, a Model of Self-Reliance". WILLA, Vol. 5. Fall 1996.)
  • I’ve also thought of some sort of ghostly apparition, in your face willow the wisp or something like that. (ghosts.org, Dec 6, 1998)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Ken Lakritz (contributed on this site)

The willow tree is traditionally associated with nefarious magical forces and spirits.

The eggcorn is particularly common in British sources, maybe influenced by the popular BBC children’s series _Willo the Wisp_ from the 80s, which is often quoted as “Willow the Wisp”.

The semantic closeness of the adjectives _wispy_ and _willowy_ may also play into this.

| 4 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/10/30 |

snub » snob

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • This pedal is real value for money. I snobbed it at first because it didn’t have the BOSS or Digitech label on it. I almost put this on eBay because I thought I don’t have any use for it. I’m glad I didn’t. (Harmony Central, Aug 03, 2005)
  • The Weavers have spent the entire episode annoying other teams, including snobbing the Aiellos and irritating the Schroeders enough to earn the nickname “Silent but Deadly.” (the Trades, October 15, 2005)
  • “A person happened to meet somebody whom he previously had a bad encounter. The person cheerfully greeted the person good morning, which the other person promptly snobbed him. His friend asked him, “Don’t you feel slighted that you were snobbed? Then why do you continue to greet him knowing that he has done you wrong and would snob you anyway?” (Reflections of a Business-Driven Life, quote in blog entry, December 21, 2004)
  • He snobbed me on AIM when I just IM’d him a simple “Aloha!” (link)

Given that _snub_ v. tr. means something close to _behaving like a snob towards (so. or sth.)_, it is certainly not surprising to find a verb _snob_ where traditionally _snub_ would be expected. What I did find surprising was the sheer versatility of _snob_, the verb.

(more…)

| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/10/29 |

mundane » Monday

Chiefly in:   Monday detail , the Monday world

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Just one of those things… even if you’ve gone over the list hundreds of times you’re bound to miss some small Monday detail. (Good-Tutorials.com, blog entry, September 26th, 2005)
  • I submit that Microsoft always tries their best to make things better, but overlooks some Monday detail that ends up shooting them in the foot. (Slashdot, comment, July 26, 2005)
  • Later I found out it was a stupid Monday detail that messed my stuff up; I had typed in newline instead of newLine. (gr0m3r.com, Oct 28, 2004)
  • I woke up to a world where the size of an enemy is described in microns and the depth of his hatred in religious beliefs.
    I went in to the Monday world of cheery platitudes, and heard, after shaking my head over the demise of the A’s, what is inexplicably known in these parts as “the Charlie story”. (American Politics Journal, Oct 19, 2001)

Analyzed or reported by:

In texts aimed at Christians of some denominations, the punning juxtaposition of one’s (presumably godly and wholesome) Sunday life with the harsher “Monday world” appears to be somewhat of a cliché. The book title _Choosing Rest: Cultivating a Sunday Heart in a Monday World_ (link) is certainly a pun rather than an eggcorn. But some of the following examples might not be, or at least might be construed as the the standard metaphor by some of their readers:

* “What does it profit a person to worship God for one hour in a church on Sunday,” laments William Diehl, “but be unable to experience God’s presence in the Monday world?” (Worshipping God in the Everyday Spaces of Life, 2000)
* What are “God’s things?” Are they spiritual rather than material? Are they religious rather than secular? Do they belong to the Sunday world rather than the Monday world? (Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church, October 16, 2005)
* There was a preacher in our town
whose Sunday text was the Prince of Peace,
but
when he looked out at the Monday world– at the uppity
blacks and pushy Jews
and sassy wives and sneaky heathen–blood
scalded his face as purple as if
he’d hung by his heels….
(excerpt from a poem by Philip Appleman, quoted on NJPoets.com)

Rob Leachman comments “Mondays can be rough, so watch out!” And indeed in German, the image of Monday being a particularly difficult day of the work week is reflected in the noun _Montagswagen_, literally “Monday car”. It refers to a car that even though bought brand new, quickly exhibits some defects and faults: a lemon or a dud, in English. The idea behind this is that it must have been built on a Monday, when the workers were supposedly less attentive to detail.

| 5 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/10/28 |

derring-do » daring-do

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Daring-do indeed.” (Samuel Brantley, Zero Dark Thirty (Central Point OR: Hellgate Press, 2002), p. 47)
  • “The tales that are narrated of my deeds of daring-do” (link)
  • “… the cast of the MTV television show “Jackass” attained celebrity through such feats of daring do - and daring do-do - as diving into a pile of elephant …” (link)
  • “This story was totally believable too, with no bragging or exaggerated accounts of heroics or daring-do.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Jonathan Lighter (American Dialect Society mailing list, 28 October 2005)

The Brantley cite was provided by Lighter on ADS-L, who noted that there were nearly 40,000 raw Google web hits (many of them irrelevant, but there are plenty of clear examples left). Lighter commented, “Not in OED, but probably what most people are thinking”.

“Daring-do” not only improves on the opaque “derring-do” semantically, but it’s also a reversion to the original idiom, which was built on the Middle English verb “durren” ‘dare’, from Old English “durran”, from which the verb “dare” is also derived.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/10/28 |
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