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wangle » wrangle

Chiefly in:   wrangle an invitation

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • “… jobshop will invite your team to tour their facility (or if you’re a good salesperson maybe you can call some plating shops and wrangle an invitation); …” (link)
  • “You love to cook and we love to eat, so please accept this gift as our shameless attempt to wrangle an invitation to dinner. Happy Birthday, Mom!” (link)
  • “He had made several frantic efforts to wrangle an invitation to the White House.” (link)

Several people — most recently, Ann Burlingham — have suggested “wrangle an invitation” to me as an eggcorn for “wangle an invitation”. The idea is that “wangle” is not a very common word, in fact a much less common word than “wrangle” (which gets considerable press in cowboy-related contexts, including Wrangler jeans). Entirely plausible (and consonant with my own impressions), though the history turns out to be much more complex than that.

(more…)

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

mother lode » motherload

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “I registered for a few things. (After talking to R… it seems like we will indeed recover the motherload of all baby objects from her garage, leaving us not needing much stuff.)” (E-mail to Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky from a friend, October 2004)
  • “The motherload of cb info,…” (link)
  • “I found the Moso motherload! … I’ma happy man.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Anna, on this site (link)
  • Arnold Zwicky (The Fall Eggcorn Crop, on Language Log)

“Load” is a great deal more familiar than “lode”, and the mother lode contains loads of (’lots of’) stuff, so the reinterpretation is understandable.

There are also some cites with “motherload” reinterpreted as ‘a mother of a load, a huge load’: “Protect your computer from a motherload of viruses, spyware Web site, company offer free ways to protect PC…” (link)

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

hoarfrost » whorefrost

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Me recently at Antelope Island - Great Salt Lake surrounded by whorefrost. …” (link)
  • “… yet it was not to be …for the wicked cold hardness of the waters of the world froze solid …and the air (error) of it ….turned into whorefrost ….” (link)

Jess Anderson suggested on the Usenet newsgroup soc.motss (20 August 2005) that “whorefrost” might occur as an eggcorn. After all, the “hoar” of “hoarfrost” is opaque. I found a few examples that appear to be genuine (some are plays on words), but these could be simple spelling errors. On the other hand, the ‘bad woman’ connotation of “whore” might be vivid to some people, who take hoarfrost to be a nasty force of nature.

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

by-election » bi-election

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Note that when a politician leaves (or gets dismissed), there’s a bi-election for that seat rather than having someone appoint a new person (or one of their friends/family).” (E-mail from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky on 12 November 2004)
  • “No member for Stapenhill, awaiting bi-election …” (link)
  • “The management of flying foxes in suburban Katherine has emerged as a key issue in this weekends bi-election …” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Arnold Zwicky (The Fall Eggcorn Crop, on Language Log)

The first cite is from e-mail to Elizabeth Zwicky, about Australian electoral politics. On 19 August 2005, Google produced ca. 4,540 raw webhits. From countries that have by-elections, of course.

The semantics seems clear: a by-election is an extra election — so two elections (”bi”) where you’d expect only one. Most people find the “by” of “by-election” opaque.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/08/19 |

bow » bough

Chiefly in:   a shot over the bough

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “This is, basically, a shot over the bough,” the agent said, “which clearly indicates that the Players Association is onto MLB’s game.” (Jayson Stark's column on espn.com)
  • “Warning: I’m firing the first shot over the bough. On behalf of my clients, we’re going to vigorously defend the continuation and preservation of the very …” (link)
  • “Let this be a shot over the bough of all bicyclists. We’re watching you and we have cell phones. I’ll go as far as to warn you.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Robert Coren (Newsgroup soc.motss posting of 20 November 2004)
  • Arnold Zwicky (The Fall Eggcorn Crop, on Language Log)

The first cite was supplied by Coren in his soc.motss posting.

Nautical expressions, like “(fire) a shot over the bow”, tend to be reshaped by the non-nautical, who will replace a mystifying specifically nautical term by a more familiar homophone, “bough” in this case.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/08/19 |
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