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root » route

Chiefly in:   route cause , (ethnic) routes

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • In its group statement, the Victory over Violence campaign was “born from the concern over the alarming rise in violent crime among youth” to spread its message of non-violence and to help young people counteract the route cause of violence. (Univ. of Michigan Daily, Oct. 4, 2000)
  • This happened late Wednesday (23:00 UT 10Mar04); was not discovered until Thursday; and the route cause not identified until late Friday. (GCN System Status, NASA, Mar. 12, 2004)
  • Pulmonary, or airway, inflammation is the route cause of asthmatic symptoms. (Western Pennsylvania Hospital News, Apr. 30, 2004)
  • At the Pucci show on Wednesday, the braided hair, trilby hats and dark tweeds streaked with pattern suggested that Christian Lacroix had also turned from his Gallic routes and Pucci’s Italian heritage to the East. (International Herald Tribune, Feb. 26, 2004)
  • At Independence Day, those of us from the United States also reflect on what it means to be an American. We are joined together not by religion, language, or common ethnic routes, but rather by our belief in the ideals of democracy. (U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan Tracey Ann Jacobson, July 4, 2005)
  • Crazy Melissa plays up her Hispanic routes right off, claiming “Hispanics won’t pay $20 for a class,” successfully alienating herself from the rest of the pastel suits who don’t know how respond to such idiocy. (Jossip, Sep. 23, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/24 |

en » on, in

Chiefly in:   in/on route (to) , on mass , on masse

Classification: English – cross-language

Spotted in the wild:

  • “4. pause made on route: a place where a bus or a train regularly pauses on its route” (link)
  • “News : UCE LECTURER ON ROUTE TO WIN NATIONAL TEACHING AWARD” (link)
  • “I have titled my remarks, ‘In Route to the Presidency: Some Ideas of Mine.’” (link)
  • “So why, other than a liberal media’s pro-gay sensibilities, would the camera crews descend on masse in Laramie but not on Rogers, Arkansas, where Jesse Dirkhising suffocated to death while his assailant had a sandwich?” (National Review Online, March 23, 2001)
  • “It’s horrifying to think that is was only fifty years ago that people in Western countries were being treated so savagely, that even young children were being killed on mass just because of their religious beliefs.” (link)
  • “The world is, unfortunately, FILLED with dictators and/or terrorists who kill on mass and at will.” (villagesoup.com, Sep 16, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • David Fenton (Usenet newsgroup soc.motss, 22 September 2005)
  • MWDEU (Article on "en route")
  • Paul Brians (Common Errors in English)

David Fenton asked Chris Waigl and me: “Is there a mixed usage of “en route”, “in route” and “on route” that is common, or am I hearing a connection between three independent phrases that doesn’t really exist?” It turns out that the “on” and “in” variants of the French “en” are very frequent indeed; raw Google web hits for “— route to” on 22 September 2005:

en route to: 5,930,000
on route to: 265,000
in route to: 192,000

A quick glance at a sampling of the “on” and “in” examples should convince anyone that these expressions are synonymous. The version with “in” translates the French literally. The version with “on” is an especially good translation of French “en”, since it occurs
with the English noun “route” in expressions like “on the/our route to Vancouver” (where French “en” is just unacceptable, in writing or speech). Note the nice juxtaposition of “on route” with “on its route” in the first cite above, from the MSN Encarta dictionary’s entry for the noun “stop”. In any case, both “on” and “in” represent attempts to Anglicize, and make sense of, the French expression, and both are phonologically very close to French “en”.

This reshaping seems to have gotten by under almost everybody’s radar (neither of the Anglicized variants is in the current OED, and even Garner doesn’t complain about them), though at least two of the standard sources mention it: Brians instructs us not to Anglicize “en” in “en route” as “in”, and MWDEU has an unusually stern entry labeling “on route” as an “embarrassing error” and cautioning: “Authors and proofreaders beware.” (Brians doesn’t mention the “on” variant, and MWDEU doesn’t mention the “in” variant.) Despite them, I think that these variants are fast edging into the mainstream.

[CW, 2005/09/27: Added “on mass(e)”, as suggested by Sandi in the comment section. The partially Anglicised form “on masse” might simply be a misspelling of the French preposition _en_, though.]

| 5 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/09/22 |

defunct » defunked

Variant(s):  defunk

Classification: English – final d/t-deletion

Spotted in the wild:

  • On Saturday Eden will be having a tribute to the recently defunked club Soundgarden. (Taipei Times, Aug 26, 2005)
  • And please let me thank you for your efforts in your hatemongering Bush Bashing for your defunked party of fanatical leftists. (alt.books.tom-clancy, Sep 8, 2005)
  • I suspect that you take DEC being defunked much more personally than I do. (alt.folklore.computers, Sep 12, 2005)
  • The relationship between Eric and James went defunk. (link)
  • Timo Ellis and Sean Lennon were featured guests on Butter 08’s self titled release on the now defunked Beastie Boy’s Grand Royal Records. (link)
  • I think TRL is now defunk. Defunked by the accountants (the new COO’s and CEO’s) who read a balance sheet and only see a cost and have no imagination of the potential gain. (BritishExpats.com forum, Sep 1, 2003)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Bill Findlay (e-mail of September 21, 2005)

The “final t/d deletion” label only applies to the not uncommon variant _defunk_.

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/09/21 |

desert » dessert

Chiefly in:   just desserts

Variant(s):  (eat one's) just deserts

Classification: English – hidden – nearly mainstream

Spotted in the wild:

  • And, at the same time, if someone committed a murder and confessed to a priest in hopes of salvation/forgiveness/etc. one would hope they have the balls to walk up to the plate and eat their just desserts. (eatforums.com, July 24, 2001)
  • I mean, for the past 500 comics I’ve been waiting for Thief to eat his just desserts…and every time that he’s come close it never happend. But now…when he came close to being right… Oh god. (Nuclear Power Forums, July 14, 2005)
  • But the gutless little fuckin coward probably wouln’t come out of his hole.No different than sadam or osama.I just believe this puke needs to eat his just desert before, he slitters his way of this rock. (blog comment, February 10, 2004)
  • This is no formulaic D&D romp; you won’t find invincible heroes and stalwart dwarves singing about gold, you won’t see fragile maidens swooning over a stout swordarm, you most certainly won’t reach a happy ending, with all the loose ends tied and all the bad guys eating their just desserts while the good guys pair off and ride into the sunset. (Amazon.com customer review, July 21, 1999)

Analyzed or reported by:

_Get one’s just desserts_ has been suggested as a potential eggcorn a number of times. It is not an unproblematic reshaping, however: inadvertent double/single consonant misspellings are extremely common, as this web search shows. I have therefore collected examples that include further circumstantial evidence that the author thought of _dessert_ as something edible. This is why the occurrences employ the verb _eat_ instead of _get_. As always, it is necessary to weed out intentional puns.

When the context is that of a meal, but the word spelled _desert_ (correctly for the idiom, but an error if the target is _dessert_), we have either an inadvertent slip or a writer who remembers their spelling lessons for _getting one’s just deserts_. The eggcorn then becomes effectively a hidden one.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/09/21 |

coif(f)ed » quaffed

Classification: English – not an eggcorn

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Local swing dancers estimate there are between 400 and 600 regular dancers here in the Portland area…..They are Lindy Hoppers, dancing the grungy. pulsating slingshot style and West Coast swingers, who look smooth and quaffed, like old-time movie stars.” (Story by Victoria Blake in the Oregonian, 16 September 2005)
  • “Over 100 fine male erotica photographs of uniquely quaffed punk bearcub type Chuck sporting shaved temples and long redhaired ponytail.” (link)
  • Page 20: “John Marler: With his perfectly quaffed hair…” Hair is coifed; wine is quaffed! (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Gilly Burlingham (E-mail of 20 September 2005)

Spelling errors that turn on homophony, but seem to involve no contribution from semantics, are a dime a dozen, and ordinarily I wouldn’t think of putting them in the eggcorn database. But every so often a really delicious one comes along. I give you “coif(f)ed” >> “quaffed”.

The first cite was provided by Gilly Burlingham. The third is from a letter to the editor of the alternative newspaper Willammette Weekly, in the 3 February 1999 issue, correcting a misspelling in its 20 January story “Pet Peeves of Portland”. (I’m assuming the Oregon connection is entirely accidental.) I can’t see any way to get from drinking liquids to styling hair, so I’ve labeled this one as not an eggcorn.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/09/21 |
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