Eggcorn Forum

Discussions about eggcorns and related topics

You are not logged in.

Announcement

Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to if you wish to register.

The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.

Thanks for your understanding.

Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2020-05-19 06:56:28

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

making up to

Just noticed an interesting little structural ambivalence I don’t remember seeing before. Not an eggcorn, of course, but that same sense of two ways to take the same thing is central to eggcorns as well.
.
A package of ground coffee advertises (in all caps, of course) that it “MAKES UP TO 113 CUPS”. Of course, “up to n measureNs”, meaning “as many as n Ns” is a very well established structure in English, but so is “makes up (in)to N”, and it struck me the second way first: this package, if all goes well, does indeed make up to be 113 cups of coffee. Hmm.


*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 .)

Offline

 

#2 2020-06-23 15:20:39

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: making up to

So the issue is whether “up” is part of the phrasal verb “makes up” or the two-word preposition “up to.”


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

Offline

 

Board footer

Powered by PunBB
PunBB is © 2002–2005 Rickard Andersson
Individual posters retain the copyright to their posts.

RSS feeds: active topicsall new posts