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wide » wild

Chiefly in:   wild awake

Classification: English – vocalized /l/

Spotted in the wild:

  • This generation is wild awake and are willing and able to resist tyranny and sadism exhibited by the likes of Dr. Chinwoke Mbadinuju. (Nigeria World, Jan. 30, 2002)
  • If Jesus in the gospel in the time of agony turned to friends and they were sleeping, I hope that the three Sisters will say, “In our agony they turned to some friends and the friends are wild awake and willing to help and to be with them.” (Homily of Bishop Luis Antonio G. Tagle, May 5, 2003)
  • Mr Wilson said the “Ghanaians are wild awake this time as far as politics and electoral issues are concerned unlike previously when people were deceived to vote for parties”. (Ghana Web, Jan. 3, 2004)

Analyzed or reported by:

Appears common in some varieties of World English (e.g., in Africa).

See also while » wild.

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/08/23 |

bawl » ball

Chiefly in:   ball one's eyes out

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

Analyzed or reported by:

| Comments Off link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/08/23 |

owe » own

Chiefly in:   owning to , own one's success to

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Rhead became a huge success within the ceramics and pottery industry owning to his ability to adapt to changing tastes and new forms of art.” (link)
  • “… to support the granting of a variance from the terms of the Billerica Zoning By-Law owning to circumstances relating to soil conditions, shape, …” (link)
  • “Today, owning to several factors including government sector reform policy, the world-wide trend of rapid development in telecommunications and information …” (link)
  • “Dell owns his success to the focusing on his customers…” (link)
  • “ ‘I own my success to education.’ Kamen also describes his father as his personal hero, …” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Linda Yanney (Usenet newsgroup soc.motss, 21 August 2005)

Although a fair number of the examples you can Google up were probably written by people who aren’t native speakers of English — Yanney provided an entertaining quotation from a French site on the deciphering of scripts — there’s still a big pile of clearly native cites, sampled above.

Yanney accounts for the semantics of the first cite above as follows: “Rhead owes his success to certain abilities; possessing, ‘owning,’ these abilities made his success possible.” The sense of personal possession is clear in the “own one’s success to” cites.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/08/22 |

benighted » beknighted

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Imagine the path of a beknighted soul as it paves its mark on the very hearts of all who hear of it.” (link)
  • “People from this beknighted time stream will be able to reach the more advanced and perfected culture of the alternative time stream.” (link)
  • “The gist of the commercials is that anyone who sticks with PC’s is a beknighted fool who doesn’t know what they’re missing.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Ann Burlingham (Usenet newsgroup soc.motss, 15 August 2005)

This one can’t be a simple spelling error, since it replaces the incredibly frequent “night” with the much more specialized “knight”. Apparently the function of knights as guardians and protectors comes to the fore in this reshaping. What lets this work is that the function of the prefix “be-” has become opaque.

| 2 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/08/21 |

bellwether » bellweather

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “”Bellweather” election? I can live with that. … this Congressional race Big Time, even dubbing it a “bellweather” for the upcoming 2006 elections. …” (link)
  • “Recession: Is auto still a bellweather industry ?” (link)
  • “Bilingual bellweather? BY: Sherry Bebitch Jeffe California Journal January 1998, p. 39. Orange County has provided an early peek at how the issue of …” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Brian Kane (Usenet newsgroup soc.motss, 16 August 2005)

The fact that the “wether” in “bellwether” refers to a castrated ram (which leads the flock) is lost to almost everybody these days (few of us are farm folk), so the word is open for reinterpretation. And, goodness knows, people have reinterpreted the word in favor of “weather” (raw Google webhits: ca. 17,600 on 20 August 2005 — vs. ca. 662,000 for “bellwether”). “Weather” is connected with prediction, so the semantic shift is unsurprising.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/08/21 |
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