shrift » shift

Chiefly in:   short shift

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Unlike Soderbergh’s Traffic, whose compelling characters sometimes get short shift in favor of examining the drug trade in as many ways possible, Last Resort takes care to always put the story first. (The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, Feb. 22, 2001)
  • Teachers encouraged her to go to stage school, but her father pulled her out after three months because “nobody else in the community sent their daughters there”. Ballet lessons, too, got short shift. (The Guardian, Aug. 21, 2003)
  • There’s another problem — because of the rise of the hip-ness of American bands, British indie-bands are getting the short-shift. (The Stanford Daily Online, Oct. 3, 2003)
  • Sometimes restaurants that specialize in beef give short shift to the other menu choices, but that’s not the case at Rio Chama. (Albuquerque Journal, Aug. 12, 2005)

The origin of _short shrift_ is explained by here, here, and here.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/12 |

nether » never

Chiefly in:   never regions

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Beneath the balcony are shop windows — or are they doorways? or … the entrance to the never regions. (Venice Gondolier, Apr. 7, 2004)
  • Rather worse for wear when I posted this topic originally, so duplicated it when I thought I had actually lost it somewhere in the never regions of my PC. (KVR Audio forum, Apr. 25, 2004)
  • Mr Admin was detained in the never regions of the country and a mystery Southend Central bug wiped out some of the other potential attendees! (Southend Central forum, Dec. 17, 2004)

Possibly influenced by Neverland of Peter Pan fame.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/11 |

rank and file » ranking file

Classification: English – and «» in/en – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

In transcripts of committee meetings, there may be some confusion (on the part of either the speaker or the transcriber) between rank and file and ranking members of the committee.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/11 |

figment » pigment

Chiefly in:   a pigment of so.'s imagination

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • I hadn’t realised the comic strips in the funny pages were so deep. I thought Hobbes was just a pigment of Calvin’s imagination. (link)
  • Soul mates a pigment of the hyperactive imagination? (link)
  • Darfur is not a pigment of a hedonists imagination-it exists and the worst affected are the children-the girls who regardless of age have been raped on countless occasions since the fighting began,the boys who have been forced to become soldiers and murderers,the babies that have died due to starvation. (link)
  • This is all just a pigment of anyone’s imagination. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

A pigment is a small particle of paint that could be construed as something that colors one’s imagination.

This eggcorn was pointed out to me by Michel Valdrighi.

| 3 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/09/11 |

cahoots » cohorts

Chiefly in:   in cohorts with

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Josie turns to Jake, who is, not surprisingly, in cohorts with Cole to get his hands on Tony’s money. (Univ. of Michigan Daily Online, Sep. 23, 1996)
  • They maliciously identify several blameless “Goodys,” or wives of Salem, as being in cohorts with the devil. (Univ. of Michigan Daily Online, Jan. 8, 1997)
  • He is from Saudi Arabia, was born into the ruling class. He was in cohorts with the government, then decided to go against that. (Richmond.com, Oct. 1, 2001)
  • The same group that alleged that Google was in cohorts with the FBI are now saying that they are violating wiretapping laws in California. (LCGrowth Marketing Blog, May 5, 2004)
  • Critics accuse the authorities of being in cohorts with developers, hungry for the revenue they can rake in. (Taipei Times, Mar. 22, 2005)

A natural substitution for a word that only survives in frozen idiomatic usage, since one is typically in cahoots with one’s cohorts.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/11 |