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moreover » morever

Variant(s):  more ever

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

I’ve labelled this one as “questionable” because the one-word version (morever), at least, could easily arise as a typographical error rather than a reanalysis. However, the examples I’ve shown here come from documents in which the word is consistently spelled this way on multiple occasions; the article from the Journal of Materials Chemistry, for example, contains four tokens of morever. It’s also quite a plausible reanalysis: the meaning of moreover, which is rather opaque, could just as sensibly be related to ‘more’ + ‘ever’ as to ‘more’ + ‘over’, and there are plenty of other -ever words (e.g., however, wherever, whatever) that could serve as analogues.

| Comments Off link | entered by Q. Pheevr, 2005/04/07 |

sow » sew

Chiefly in:   reap what you sew

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • Are you a complete idiot? It was spelled out to you in big type. The term “you reap what you sew” It means one obtains as a reward that which they follow. (link)
  • Reap what I sew (not sow, that’s a pig). Another old church cliche that you heard somewhere. If I reap what I sew, then I will be a millionaire because I have invested alot of money in stocks. (link)
  • One must reap what they sew. But, may one also reap what they have not sewn? (link)

See sow»soak for why it’s questionable.

As a sidenote, there’s another saying parodying “reap what you sow” that seems to be in use: “rip what you sew”.

| 4 comments | link | entered by David Romano, 2005/04/06 |

navel » naval

Chiefly in:   naval(-)gazing

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • But unlike the Times, which has been engaged in a torturous exercise of naval gazing and self-flagellation, with its accustomed arrogance, since it was revealed that one of its younger reporters had committed all sorts of journalistic sins, we are doing something about it, and fast. (Lufkin Daily News, 2003/05/30)
  • Conservative naval gazing (Politics Canada, headline)
  • okay, fine - i know these are the most boring posts of all - but everyone’s guilty of using their weblog for a bit of naval-gazing here and there, including me. (link)
  • *Begin naval gazing ramble* This is a question I have been wrestleing with lately. […] *end naval gazing ramble* (link)
  • We don’t want to be dreary old fuddy-duddies whose scowled faces reveal the intensity of our negative naval-gazing. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

| 4 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/04/03 |

rapt » wrapped

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • As he settled into his new clubhouse Sunday, Leiter seemed as if he could have been a coach. Before he had taken off his dress pants, he was wrapped in a conversation with the bullpen coach Neil Allen, his former Yankees teammate. (New York Times, July 18, 2005)
  • Young mom, though seemingly oblivious and wrapped in conversation, didn’t miss a beat, and corrected her son with downtown, seen-it-all aplomb - “Don’t touch the big snake, sweetie, we’re going out for pizza” - before they strolled away. (New York Times, July 11, 2005)
  • And as you will discover, we are going to listen in wrapped attention, because what you have to say is very important to us and—as we go about our very important work. (House Committee on Science transcript, Oct. 29, 2003)

or is it rapped? This one has always puzzled me. The usage “I was really XrapXXX that you called me” seems to date back to the early 70s, but it was so much a spoken idiom that I don’t recall seeing it written for some years.

[Examples added 7/18/05 by Ben Zimmer, entry marked ‘questionable.’ _Rapt_ and _wrapped_ can both mean ‘absorbed, engrossed,’ so it’s difficult to assign eggcorn status when used in the construction “to be wrapped/rapt in (thought, conversation, etc.).” _Wrapped_ seems much more eggcornish when directly modifying a noun, as in “wrapped attention.” As for the usage noted by @ndrew, that appears to be an Australian colloquialism meaning ‘overjoyed, delighted.’ According to Oxford and Encarta, this is considered a blend of _wrapped up_ and _rapt_.]

| 2 comments | link | entered by @ndrew, 2005/03/20 |

Grauman » Grumman

Chiefly in:   Grumman's Chinese Theatre

Classification: English – questionable

From Jim Landau on ADS-L, 12 December 2004: “A favorite of mine is “Grumman’s Chinese Theater”, which presumably hosted
the premiete of the movie “Top Gun”.”

Not an eggcorn, strictly speaking, but still a reshaping in which an unfamiliar item is replaced by a more familiar one (for someone who knows more about the aerospace industry than about Hollywood).

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/03/16 |
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