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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Ken Lakritz’ east of use may well be this same error. It seems an unlikely typo (t is not next to e on a qwerty keyboard), but may well be something like a spell-checker’s guess for a mistyped “easd†or “easrâ€. Anyhow, the combination of “at east†feels a little more reasonably locative than “east of use†does, to me.
He tried to put her mind at east, but could see that his success was limited.
she still didn’t feel at east. She needed to ask, she needed to know.
Kerry met my daughter before the session and made her feel completely at east about the whole experience and explained what would happen.
All new patients are given a tour of our facility and sterilization procedures to put them at east that we offer the safest possible environment.
The old life is buried in which you lived ill at east: may the new life arise
Lewis knows the effects his massive bulk has on mere mortals and he tries his best to put us at east. Still, folks freeze.
He made both me and my Mother feel completely at east and like I made the right decision in picking him as my surgeon.
Eggcorning possibilities? I don’t know. As I said above, at east fits reasonably compatibly into a location locution. I have some vague feeling, perhaps from living or reading in North America since long ago, that the east is a more comfortable, settled direction. When things go west it pretty much means they go haywire.
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It still feels more like an odd error than a clear eggcorn to me.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-04-22 22:33:34)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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When things go west it pretty much means they go haywire.
Are you thinking of “to go south?” I think of “going west” as a euphemism for dying.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I guess dying is the ultimate malfunction? Anyhow, yes, go south also means to go wrong, but they’re slightly different: things going south is the results taking a nosedive, going west is a less predictable sort of failure. Apparently at least a few others use the locution as well; a high proportion of the hits seem to be from British or Aussie sites, so maybe that’s where it comes from?
Remember Somers Motors took over in ‘83??? However the principal mechanic left (Oswald someone?) and the whole thing went west.
Well the original sideways bend started to come back and the whole thing went west. You end up having to do fifteen heating sessions to get it right.
Looks like that “beauty” of hers didn’t help any in KEEPING them married; the whole thing went west only 2 years later-
I know the hospitality industry was quite buoyant about limits going from 20 to 50 people but the whole thing went west.
[quote: “There is one caveat though. In order to setup standalone mode you have to connect the unit just once through firewire to a PC/Mac and run the setup software. Once you disconnect it and power cycle the unit it will be in standalone mode.†Comment:] And thats where it all went west. I dont have a firewire connection home and this is for my Home setup.
This next one unfortunately I couldn’t pull up the original document, but here is the google summary:
... of occasions and the whole thing went west. Oh here we say, go south. That’s interesting. Why why West …
In a Quora conversation where someone had asked about “go westâ€, one correspondent, a self-proclaimed “scientist†says:
(March 12, 2020) ¶ If something “goes west†it means that something has gone wrong or not to it’s intended plan. ¶ “There’s no point carrying on, the decorating has gone west†¶ “I’m not watching this football game anymore it’s going west†¶ You can also use it to describe your own feelings ¶ “that police officer is sending me west†meaning “That police officer is making me feel uncomfortableâ€
Another (a self-identified BA in English from Gallaudet) answers:
I think you mean “went southâ€, right? I doubt that “went west†is even a known phrase, unless it’s a new slang term. I don’t know when “went south†was first used, but the general meaning is that something went wrong or didn’t go according to plan. I have heard it used a lot on police procedural TV shows. “The detectives of the drug squad were about to arrest the suspect, but then everything went south.â€.
Are we being made into mouthpieces for others’ thoughts, do you suppose, Kem?
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-04-26 16:21:38)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Joe Wright, Retired at Mizuho Financial Group,
writes (Feb 6 2020 ― on that same Quora page ):
Going west has been linked to dying in English since the sixteenth century, though the idea must surely be very much older. It is sometimes said that it refers to the ride westwards that condemned prisoners in London took along Holborn from Newgate Prison to the gibbet at Tyburn, where Marble Arch now stands. However, it was first recorded in a poem of the early 1300s, before Tyburn was used as a place of execution: “Women and many a willful man, as wind and water have gone west.” ¶ Go west seems anciently to be connected with the direction of the setting sun, symbolising the end of the day and so figuratively the end of one’s life. It is in used as a euphemism for dying in the Hittite language which dates back to the bronze age.
You’re batting 1000, Kem.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-04-26 22:19:50)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Yesterday I noticed the use of “went south” in a British TV programme. It jarred, but had it been delivered in a US accent I probably wouldn’t have noticed. South certainly suggests directionality as in drops on graphs or, as I heard recently, a euphemistic reference to a southern endoscopy.
On the “gone west” front, I am reminded of a newly ordained C of E priest who smugly informed me that he, unlike me. would now be buried with his head to the east. We, the laity, are buried with our heads to the west so that, come the Resurrection, we spring upright, blinded by the Light from the east. My priestly pal, with the light behind him, suffers no such inconvenience.
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The metaphors of directionality are intensely language- and dialect-specific, it would seem.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Peter Forster wrote:
We, the laity, are buried with our heads to the west so that, come the Resurrection, we spring upright, blinded by the Light from the east. My priestly pal, with the light behind him, suffers no such inconvenience.
As long as he (and we) is buried face-up rather than face-down. The odds would be better buried north-south, seems to me.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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It just occurred to me that at east might arise as a blend of at ease with at rest .
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Are any of you familiar with David Cecchetto’s work on what he calls idiom conflations ? They are what we have talked about as idiom blending, and he’s got some good examples. I think I may buy his book: it’s Conflation: Conversational Idiom for the 21st Century
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Some very nice ones there. I liked he really pushes my goat. Oddly, he encourages the use of these chimeras.
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Yeah, it really grinds your goat .
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That one (which I have run into since ’06) has a bunch of Google hits, but reading through the ones it lists, a great many seem purposeful, the kind of usage Cecchetto is recommending, and which I for one have indulged in plenty of times. There is an Urban Dictionary entry for it as well. The goat shows up in many others, such as get under your goat, get on your goat, get your goat up, stick in your goat, set your goat on fire , and half a dozen more.
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To my surprise, all 318,000 hits on grinding the envelope fit on two pages of the Google report (what do those numbers mean?) and they all seem to be quite literally referring to grinding some kind of envelope.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-05-13 20:29:54)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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