exorbitant » exuberant

Chiefly in:   exuberant prices

Classification: English – questionable

Spotted in the wild:

  • As 0% balance transfer deals dwindle, cards that offer extremely low rate of interest for the lifetime of the balance are ahead in the popularity stakes. These deals allow cardholders to pay off their credit card debt over a long period of time without accruing more debt due to exuberant interest rates. (CardGuide.co.uk, September 20, 2006)
  • The Motion Sound KP-200S: Not Worthy Of It’s Exuberant Price (Epinions.com, Sep 04, 2005)
  • Titled Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, the doc focuses on the private corporations charging exuberant prices for goods in Iraq (a six-pack of Coca-Cola for $45?), much of which is, in the end, paid for by American taxpayers. (cinematical, blog entry, Sep 19, 2006)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Nancy Friedman (on her blog, and in the Eggcorm forums)

This astonishing substitution has aspects of an eggcorn, with the adjective “exaggerated” providing for the link between the sense of the original and the reshaping. But a case could be made for this being more like a malapropism, or for the meanings of _exorbitant_ and _exuberant_ collapsing into one when costs and prices are concerned — at least for some people. This is why I have marked it as questionable for the time being.

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2006/10/16 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by peeps , 2006/10/20 at 6:59 pm

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exuberant

  2. 2

    Commentary by pwainewright , 2006/10/23 at 8:47 am

    Isn’t this influenced by US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan’s warning about stock prices being propelled by ‘irrational exuberance’ in the late 1990’s? The warning almost has the status of folklore in financial circles and is often recalled by journalists and others when writing about markets where prices appear to have got out of hand.

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