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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2017-09-05 20:28:43

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

"Ambers" for embers

A firefighter from British Columbia, describing a fire’s spread on the radio yesterday, referred to the epiphenomena of a major wildfire in this way.

There’s a good chance that this particular example is an anticipation error driven by ashes, but looking around on the web turns up lots of visions of yellow-orange ambers glowing in a fire’s bed. Wikipedia counts amber as “a pure chroma color, located on the color wheel midway between the colors of gold and orange.” Sounds about right for embers.

The possession of the precious Fire was kept strictly in the hands of devout select experts (Zarathushtra’s Athravans – Fire Priests) during the Middle Bronze Age (1800-1200 BCE) who tended the glowing ambers in special cage-like containers. They would have spent sleepless nights to “keep the ambers aglow perpetually” while working in shifts.
Fire priests of the Bronze Age

I could tell that our relationship was like a dying flame and there I was, attempting to salvage the glowing ambers by tossing in parts of myself to keep it alive.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/charmaine-le … ve-myself/

About 160 raw ghits.

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#2 2017-09-06 02:24:49

Peter Forster
Eggcornista
From: UK
Registered: 2006-09-06
Posts: 1222

Re: "Ambers" for embers

Hmm, we should have thought of this before. How embarrassing. The cheeks begin to glow.

The thing is. I’ve been down at he dealer so many time for a wind noise problem I was having that I’m a little amberassed to show my face there.

I think he was just to amberassed to post that he didn’t know where to plug it in :P

Far more common is the alternatively spelled eggcorn, which not only has an orange glow but seems painfully hot too.

I was very emberassed and worried when I went in for my first brazilian wax, but they made it much less …

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#3 2017-09-06 08:35:30

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: "Ambers" for embers

Excellent eggcorns, all three. I especially liked having the oral documentation as well as the written.
.
Actually, I guess amberassed might be a kind of long-distance metathesis (consecutive vowels but not adjacent key-strokes switched.)
.
Amberassed and emberassed make me think of a mandrill or one of those other baboons with the neoglescently colorful posteriors.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2017-09-06 11:09:28)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#4 2017-09-06 12:20:20

yanogator
Eggcornista
From: Ohio
Registered: 2007-06-07
Posts: 237

Re: "Ambers" for embers

It seems a stretch that emberassed would be pronounced like embarrassed, which leads me to conclude that it is just bad spelling (which is pretty common these days).


“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin

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#5 2017-09-06 18:37:16

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: "Ambers" for embers

I have noted emberassed and neoglescent in my wallet, to be added to my working vocabulary.

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