stock » stalk
Spotted in the wild:
- Ms. Blackie went stalk-still and toppled over. (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sep 7, 2003)
- Do you know that most enslaved gnomes are so traumatized by this process that they stand stalk-still, eyes wide open, unmoving for years until their eventual deaths? (comment on blog, February 2, 2004)
- Mortified, I suddenly realized I’d been standing stalk-still in the middle of the stone path with my mouth agape. (peacecorps.gov, volunteer experience)
- He typically hides deep in the marsh. When near the edge, he camouflages in the marsh almost perfectly, standing stalk still, long neck and beak pointed upward. (Tails of birding, blog, May 13, 2006)
Analyzed or reported by:
- apprentice (on her blog, April 12, 2007)
apprentice writes in her blog:
> Tuesday night I was at Poetry School, and a poem I’d written about a plantation of trees was really well received, which pleased me a lot […]
>
> But I was asked about a phrase I’d put in it, which was stalk-still, which I meant as a deliberate play on stock-still. People were interested in knowing if I had actually meant to do it. And I had, because I’d caught a programme on the BBC that relates to this site _[the Eggcorn Database]_ on eggcorns.
Most writers in the examples seem to have “still as a stalk” in mind, but the cite from the Tails of birding blog has a reference to stalking just a few lines before it employs the eggcorn: _Again we stalked carefully along the trail, using each opening in the marsh willows to search through the broken reeds._
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