manna » manner

Chiefly in:   manner from heaven

Variant(s):  manor

Classification: English – /r/-dropping

Spotted in the wild:

  • I have come out of the Auckland winter so this cool court which takes a shot and lets the ball die when it is manner from heaven for me. (Cathay Pacific Squashtalk, Aug. 25, 2001)
  • When you get messages like this repeatedly, and your Bank Account is empty, with outstanding bills for you to pay, your first instinct would be to get it and say thank God for the ‘blessings and manner from Heaven’. (Nigeriaworld, Mar. 21, 2002)
  • To you and me, the money means very little, but to a poor person this will be manner from heaven. (Africa Economic Analysis, 2003)
  • For the Opposition Leader, Simon Crean, the words of the American President have been manner from heaven. (ABC (Australia) radio transcript, Feb. 11, 2003)
  • I think Bush has exploited Al Qaeda for foreign policy and electoral objectives - and Al Qaeda have exploited Bush, who’s Crusade gaffs and images of Abu Gharaib and collateral damage from Iraq must have seemed like manor from heaven. (Uplink forum post, July 16, 2005)
  • For a quarter of a century, Cameroonians were waiting for political and economic manner from heaven but all in vain. (Cameroon Post reader comment, Dec. 13, 2005)
  • The Children of Israel in Exodus chapter 16 forgot God’s goodness and power and complained that Moses brought them into the wilderness to kill them but God provided them with manner. […] So too did the people of Israel - they were provided for with Manner from Heaven in Exodus chapter 16: 4 - 9. (Grenada Today, sermon by Pastor Stanford Simon, Feb. 11, 2006)
  • This Best Buy information is treated like manner from heaven for those of us bent on emulating scrooge! (Whatprice.co.uk)

In the form manor from heaven, this often appears as a non-rhotic pun. But most of the examples for manner from heaven are more clearly eggcorns (frequently from speakers of various African Englishes).

| 1 comment | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2006/05/22 |

flawless » floorless

Classification: English – /r/-dropping

Spotted in the wild:

  • Every track on albums such as “Controversy,” “1999,” “Around The World In A Day,” “Parade,” etc was not floorless. (alt.music.prince, Sep. 11, 1997)
  • I have a friend who is a floorless dj and shares my love for breakbeat. (uk.music.breakbeat, Sep. 15, 1999)
  • Your logic is floorless. (alt.recovery.na, Jan. 21, 2000)
  • I don’t think anyone expected the floorless play achieved by Spurs. (alt.fan.scarecrow, Jan. 24, 2002)
  • They were good, for me some were a bit obvious in terms of the imagery but the execution was floorless and I love anything that you can’t quite work out how it’s made so perfectly. (Stuart Semple blog post, Sep. 14, 2005)
  • Dave Haley’s drumming was floorless and fast as fuck!! (Beb's Space blog post, Mar. 30, 2006)
  • Her [black belt] grading went really really well. Her patterns were floorless, the self developed was sweet, terminology was spot on and she broke all her boards!! (Captain Ordinary blog post, Apr. 7, 2006)
  • I have found from exprience the Swedes along with other Northern Europeans and the Dutch are excellent English speakers in most cases with a floorless accent that I have often mistaken them for native British speakers. (Antimoon English forum post, Apr. 16, 2006)

Analyzed or reported by:

When Eggcorn Forum contributor Kirk pointed out the use of floorless for flawless in the Antimoon forum (see last citation above), the original poster claimed that “floorless is simply another way of spelling flawless here” (the poster hails from northern New Zealand). That claim is hard to justify, though floorless is an obvious pronunciation spelling for non-rhotic speakers who homonymize floor and flaw.

The semantic rationalization is a bit difficult to discern. Perhaps “floor” is taken as a metaphor for a limit, so something that is “floorless” is limitless in its excellence.

| 1 comment | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2006/05/22 |

mosh » marsh

Chiefly in:   marsh pit

Classification: English – /r/-dropping

Spotted in the wild:

  • By the way, I went the Boingo concert on November 1. It was good! The marsh pit went crazy over “Insanity” and “Dead Man’s Party.” (alt.fan.oingo-boingo, Nov. 3, 1994)
  • Today, the plaintiffs played the 30-second ad tune, titled “Mosh Pit 2″ by its songwriter (and repeatedly called “Marsh Pit” by Judge Henry Hupp). (E! Online, May 7, 1997)
  • i turned on m t.v and it looked like a documenty on marsh pits and slug fests. […] all i remembered back in the days when u went into a marsh pit all u could find were fat chicks pierces and tatooed all over talk about taking that to the next level and starting a health club that teaches u things to do in a marsh pit. (Lafoot blog post, May 5, 2002)
  • Right now when all the 7th grade students enter the building or return from lunch the scene in the halls reminds one of a marsh pit at a rock concert. (Bedford (NH) School District Annual Report, Feb. 10, 2005)
  • It was like a marsh-pit at a No Doubt concert, only thing there were not only people, but cars/bikes/scooters/autos also in the marsh-pit. (rec.sport.cricket, Mar. 28, 2005)
  • I knew there would defiantly be a marsh pit but yet again another crowd surfer only hit me once. (Stupid-Boy forum post, Mar. 22, 2006)
  • many ppl who marsh pit can dance. but i have been in many a pit where each and every stupid, wanna-be-punk-rock-jock in there thought that the point of marshing was to hit and push as many people as they could, before getting knocked over. (UTRave.org forum post, Mar. 26, 2006)

Analyzed or reported by:

As with sought after » sort after and others, this eggcorn works best for non-rhotic English speakers who have mosh and marsh as rough homonyms (/mɑː∫/). But it appears that many rhotic Americans also use this substitution, presumably because of an unfamiliarity with the slam-dancing sense of mosh and mosh pit (terms that emerged from the hard-core punk scene in the early ’80s). The reanalysis of mosh pit (area in front of a stage where concertgoers mosh) as marsh pit makes a certain sense, since as Ken Lakritz points out “from a distance, it looks like a swamp (or marsh) of bodies.”

| 2 comments | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2006/05/22 |

cart » cat

Chiefly in:   put the cat before the horse

Classification: English – idiom-related – /r/-dropping

Spotted in the wild:

  • The feeling of the people is that the police stinks and it is rotten. You, within days of assuming the leadership of the force, announced what you regard as your reform programmes. Isn’t it like putting the cat before the horse? Why didn’t you carry out internal purge and cleansing first before this outward approach? (NigerianMuse, February 06, 2005)
  • A population policy that is not predicated on the result of a credible census, in our view, is tantamount to putting the cat before the horse. (THISDAYOnLine.com, Nov. 16, 2004)
  • Before deregulation, pundits had expected the Obasanjo government to put the nations infrastructures into good working order if not for anything to make the deregulation effective, unfortunately the present arrangement is akin to putting the cat before the horse. (Max Uba : Deregulation and the Empty Jerry Can, (Niger Delta Congress))
  • But perhaps to expect that the Attorney-General’s Office and the Government in general can eradicate corruption is to put the cat before the horse. (Daily Nation (Kenya), September 13, 1998)
  • I enjoyed this entry, but i think you put the cat before the horse. (Comment on online diary entry, Apr 9, 2001)

This eggcorn, which in some case might be a typo from omitting to hit one key, was reported by on the American Dialect Society mailing list by Mark Peters, who saw it in a student paper.

It seems to be most frequent in writings by people from Africa — maybe because the historical image of horse-drawn carts is less present there than in societies of European culture.

| 8 comments | link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/03/15 |

out of » outer

Chiefly in:   outer body experience

Classification: English – /r/-dropping

Spotted in the wild:

  • As the statistics are staring out at you, an outer body experience occurs; sitting there you realize the blessings of your life, the unfathomable anxiety of wondering what it feels like to go to bed hungry. (College of Human Sciences at Auburn University, Travelblog, Nov. 17, 2004)
  • I am now 19 years old, and i have been having outer body experiences for the last 4, 5 years, from the time i first heard about them and started experimenting. (Unexplained Mysteries forum, Nov. 26, 2004)
  • I’m wondering if anybody else experiences this. I call it an outer body experience. (HealingWell forum, Aug. 17, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

| 1 comment | link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/01 |
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