cinch » synch

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • But yeah, Wordpress is a synch to get going locally, and it means you can testdrive designs, plugins, the whole shebang. (Chocolate and Vodka blog, comment, Sep 15, 2005)
  • Elderflower Champagne is a synch to make, don’t know why more people don’t bother. You only need a few elderflower heads to make it. (A Spoonful of Sugar blog, comment, November 23, 2004)
  • The point is, I suck at gadgets unless it is breaking them and FinePix Digital Camera 2650 is a synch to use. (epinions.com, camera review, May 01, 2004)
  • Mega Bloks are great. They come in joyful colors such as red, yellow, blue and green. They are easy to connect together and are a synch to take apart. (epinions.com, product review, May 26, 2001)
  • It was a synch to load up CD’s and their associated labels into the CD 80 storage case. (Audioholics.com, product review, July 19, 2004)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Kevin Marks (on IRC, September 15, 2005)

It makes sense that _synch_ should denote particular ease of use or execution.

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/09/15 |

lactose » lack toast

Chiefly in:   lack toast intolerant , lack toast and tolerant

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Everyone likes cheese! And those people who don’t, those lack toast intolerant people, they are aliens! Jeeze I’m good. I mean, cheese I’m good!” […] No offense intended for lack toast intolerant people. (link)
  • Let me put it this way pretend you’re lack toast in tolerant and the movie was a glass of milk, you’d have one bad stomach ache but feel 50 pounds lighter after leaving the bathroom I mean theater I mean. (link)
  • I like this one, but it also makes me sad, I think I might be lack toast n tolerant… I get bad tummy aches, but if you ask me i think it’s worth it. (Manga Academy forum, Jul 31, 2004)
  • I think i am lack toast n tolerant…. Everytime i intake a diary product( a product with milk in it) I get sick… (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Michael Quinion (for the double eggcorn "lack toast and tolerant") (World Wide Words newsletter, August 20, 2005, citing Michael McKernan)

This rather astonishing reshaping has been noted repeatedly, mostly in the double-eggcorn form _lack toast and tolerant_. The blogger at Davezilla.com reports having “heard [_lack toast and tolerant_] at work”, and at the Daily Trojan site, Jason Levy tells a jocular — and maybe invented — story about a childhood misunderstanding of his:

> When I was little and overheard adults discussing lactose intolerance, I misheard the sounds. I thought you suffered from a condition called “Lack Toast Intolerance.” Today I realize that lactose is a vital organic molecule whose deficiency causes a great deal of harm, but at the time I thought you just really enjoyed toast.

Web searches show that _lack toast and tolerant_ is several times more common than the single eggcorn _lack toast intolerant_ (ca. 80 vs. ca. 30 Ghits), even if we account for puns, second-hand reports and sites quoting Michael Quinion’s newsletter.

See also the separate entry _intolerant » and tolerant_.

[An email discussion with Arnold Zwicky helped clear up this reshaping.]

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/09/15 |

intolerant » and tolerant

Chiefly in:   lactose and tolerant , lack toast and tolerant

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Oh. i love Cold Stone Creamery! Sad thing is I can’t really have much of the ice cream there anymore since I am lactose and tolerant. (CMC Central forum, Aug 19, 2005)
  • Milk and string cheese, that’s all im going to eat from now on. Till I get lack toast and tolerant. (Dream Views forum, Aug 13, 2005)
  • ya thats disgusting man i cant believe you your lack toast and tolerant thats an early sign of homosexuality which im notsok with. (Teen Sexuality forum, Sep. 11, 2003)
  • I am trying several different medicines to try to control that and they think that I might be lactose and tolerant, after 13 years of worshiping milk. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Michael Quinion (for the double eggcorn "lack toast and tolerant") (World Wide Words newsletter, August 20, 2005, citing Michael McKernan)

As far as I have been able to determine, _and tolerant_ instead of _intolerant_ only occurs in cases where the writer is aiming for _lactose intolerant_ (in whichever spelling).

Strangely, even for the second most common medical term of the form “X intolerant”, _gluten intolerant_, the substitution doesn’t happen. An extrapolation of search engine hit counts for _lactose intolerant_, _lactose and tolerant_ and _gluten intolerant_ led me to expect about a dozen occurrences of _gluten and tolerant_. Considering that _in tolerant_ changes the meaning of _intolerant_ to its opposite, I wonder if the reshaping becomes more likely with increasing obscurity of the modifying noun, and if some writers believe that _lactose_ is an adjective, maybe related to _comatose_.

For further discussion of on the double eggcorn _lack toast and tolerant_ see the entry _lactose » lack toast_.

[An email discussion with Arnold Zwicky helped clear up this reshaping.]

| 1 comment | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/09/15 |

flush » flesh

Chiefly in:   flesh against

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • The fiberglass fish he paints must be hollowed out and mounted flesh against the wall, he said. (Waterfront News, Aug. 2002)
  • One participant thought I should indent the text, so that the text is not flesh against the Web page border. (San Diego Beaches, SDSU, Aug. 12, 2004)
  • This version of Cerebro is, similar to the movie version, a big round room. The only difference is that it is more of a half-circle, with a computer console almost flesh against the wall opposite the door. (Genetic Anomaly forum, Feb. 28, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

See also flesh » flush.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/15 |

sensor » censor

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • The Mercenaries have motion censor goggles. The motion censor goggles will obviously detect motion. (Talk XBOX, game review)
  • And my car, at the shop for a regular checkup.. they replaced some sort of dual oxygen censor.. and now it appears one of the new censors was bad. (napsterization.org, blog entry, September 12, 2005)
  • Morino Tamagotch, Tamagotchi Garden or whatever you wish to call it, while it does have a motion and sound censor, it does not talk anymore then a Tamagotchi Angel does. (link)
  • Question: Umino Tamagotch/OceanGotchi/Tamagotchi Ocean has a water censor and I have to put it in water for a certain amount of hours per day? Answer: No. Wouldn’t we all love that though? This rumor has been proven false by the owners of Umino Tamagotch. While it does have a sound/motion censor like Angelgotch, it doesn’t have a water censor. If you put it in water, it will break. (link)
  • I think that it is due to the new generation lens specifically designed for the new 8MP digital censor. (Tom's Hardware, camera review, May 21, 2004)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Kevin Marks (on IRC, September 13, 2005)
| 2 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/09/13 |