incorrigible » incourageable

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • A new voice boomed now, much like the old one, but with more anger. It was the voice of an infuriated parent, ready to dole out punishment to an incourageable child. (link)
  • you’ll also note that some of the greatest ‘defenders of the faith’ had no faith or were incourageable drunkards who played for conquest and booty… (link)
  • We drove in silence to my condo in Gold Coast where you would prove to be the most incourageable and thankless of all my progeny. (link)
  • I’ve given the POWER to the most corrupted, incourageable, untenable hunks of human viciousness I could find. (link)

Even though the word _encourageable_ (meaning “capable of or responding well to being encouraged”) probably exerts a pull on the spelling of _incorrigible_, I have marked the reshaping as _incourageable_ as a genuine eggcorn: The link between the _-corrig-_ component and _correct(ion)_ might indeed be rather obscure for many people. Moreover, except in the euphemism _correctional facility_, _correction_ isn’t employed very often to refer to discipline (or child rearing).

Sometimes, however, the conflation with _encourageable_ goes all the way, as in this entry from the Urban Dictionary:

> 1. Cretin
> An encourageable greenhorn. No matter how much you try, the person has no idea of what he is being instructed, nor does he care. The person is hopeless

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/04/01 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by AnonymousCoworker , 2005/05/11 at 3:58 pm

    Sweet! I’m an idiot.

    I knew something was wrong with that word when I typed it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It slipped from my memory after I posted it, and now my brain finally remembers why that word looked so wrong. Thanks.

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