barbed wire » bobwire
Spotted in the wild:
- A dandelion
stretches in the warm sunlight
by the bobwire fence (link) - Dorothy Zinke Roberts as a little girl would walk over the fields with her brothers and sisters to go to school. On the way, they had to crawl under a bobwire fence and Dorothy would purposely tear any dress she didn’t like on that bobwire fence so as not to have to wear it again. (link)
- Here I go again with the dang flagging of the bobwire. (We have to have bobwire because of the cows). (link)
Analyzed or reported by:
- Arnold Zwicky at Language Log (The Fall Eggcorn Crop)
The author of the poem cited above explains:
> […] all I ever heard growing up was “bobwire”. I’m sure that’s hillbilly talk and it’s the only word I knew for barbed wire until I was grown [… ]
1
Commentary by Dale , 2005/03/07 at 4:54 pm
During my Freshman year of college, I wrote an essay where I used the term “bob war” thinking it was the correct name. This was not good for a boy who grew up in North Carolina but was going to school in Massachusetts. My English prof never let me live it down. . .