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bed » bread

Chiefly in:   bread and breakfast

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “Finding the right hotel, hostel, bread and breakfast or temporary lodgings at the right prices for the East Village and New York City area.” (link)
  • “The Athena Hotel is a lovely family run bread and breakfast hotel, in a restored Victorian listed building, professionally designed and tastefully decorated, offering guests the ambience and warmth necessary for a relaxing and enjoyable stay.” (link)
  • “Information on rural real estate, hunting land, acreage, recreational property, farms, ranches, hunting & fishing retreats, timber, bread and breakfasts, motels, hotels, country stores, bars, cafes, taverns, more… “ (link)

Cites supplied to me by Tommy Grano.

Some Google statistics (on 18 May 2005):
“bed and breakfast”: ca. 6,030,000 web hits
“bread and breakfast”: ca. 13,400 web hits
“bred and breakfast”: ca. 872 web hits
(a great many of them from non-US/UK sites)

The “bred and breakfast” cites probably have “bred” as a misspelling for “bread”. The very large number of “bread and breakfast” cites argues that this is no inadvertent error (with the “br” of “bread” anticipating the “br” of “breakfast”).

| 2 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/05/06 |

each his » each’s

Chiefly in:   to each's own

Variant(s):  eaches, each is, each as

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “But all in all I thought this was a spectacular album that grabs me and pulls me in everytime I listen to it. But then again to each’s own I guess…” (link)
  • “Freedom of speech is very important, but i think its better to say how u feel to the persons face, just my oppinion. to each’s own.” (link)
  • “I dont understand why someone would spend that much on the 3.0g when intel is already starting there next line. But to eaches own but i can relate to your parents not letting use there credit card.” (link)
  • “To each is own, I guess. Your definition gives you happiness, just like Frank’s gives him his.” (link)
  • “I’m for the most part against reading and posting at the TOW sites particularly when you are very new to the infidelity nightmare. But to each as own” (link)

Cites supplied to me by Tommy Grano.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/05/06 |

spit and image » spitting image

Classification: English – questionable – nearly mainstream – and «» in/en

Originally entered by xerby, who commented:

Just a phrase, “spitting image”, I’d heard for about forty years. And then one day someone on the radio said “spit and image” which immediately made more sense to me. In the first we could easily visualize a boy picking up his father’s bad habits(spitting…like mothers don’t spit), or if you’ve ever seen a boy walking with his dad you’d see the same gait(as well as image). In the second instance, “spit” infers a more visceral, biological, connection.
And, of course, the visual “image” stays as part of the phrase.

Most major dictionaries report that _spitting image_ is an alteration of _spit and image_. In an article in American Speech, however, Larry Horn argues that the expression was originally _spitten image_ (_spitten_ being a now-archaic dialectal form of the past participle of _spit_), and that both _spit and image_ and _spitting image_ are later reinterpretations. (The _American Speech_ link requires a subscription to Project Muse — see also Michael Quinion’s summary at World Wide Words).

Horn’s article also discusses various eggcornish reanalyses of _in_/_and_/_-in’_/_-en_, some of which appear elsewhere in the database (e.g., off the beat and path, once and a while).

| 6 comments | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/05/04 |

hawk » hock

Classification: English – cot/caught merger

Spotted in the wild:

  • I wonder if they’ve changed the time of year of the sale — I certainly don’t recall that the little lasses had to freeze themselves for their cause, hocking cookies outside of supermarkets in the middle of the *winter*. (soc.motss, Jan 19, 1999)
  • Most of these courses are simply recruiting grounds for the various academic departments — storefront windows where they hock their wares to wide-eyed freshmen and sophomores, trying desperately to convince them that what they have to offer is more valuable and useful than what’s being sold next door. (Univ. of Michigan Review, Mar 31, 1999)
  • He usually heads out to his “home base” in the U-district, although he occasionally goes up to Capitol Hill to hock his wares on Broadway. (Univ. of Washington Daily, Nov 29, 1999)
  • He’s hocking some video tape on his website. (rec.aviation.piloting, Aug 9, 2000)
  • Even the street venders have relocated to Flushing, Queens to hock their wares. (NYU Portfolio, May 12, 2003)

Like wrought » rot and naught » not, this is an eggcorn that works best for those with the cot/caught merger.

Hawk ‘to offer for sale (by calling out in the street)’ and hock ‘to pawn’, though not etymologically related, are semantically close enough to make this a relatively common eggcorn.

Note also that hawk in the sense of ‘cough up phlegm’ (as in hawk a loogie) often appears in the form of hock (see David Wilton’s Wordorigins).

| 3 comments | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/04/21 |

crosier » crow’s ear

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • The 84-year-old John Paul was laid out in Clementine Hall, dressed in white and red vestments, his head covered with a white bishop’s miter and propped up on three dark gold pillows. Tucked under his left arm was the silver staff, called the crow’s ear, that he had carried in public. (International Herald Tribune, Apr 4, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

| 1 comment | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/04/21 |
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