slings » strings

Chiefly in:   strings and arrows

Classification: English – citational

Spotted in the wild:

  • Bogged down by the strings and arrows of outrageous urban life? This cyberspace exhibition is the ideal place to visit and unwind. (Spider Magazine, May 2002)
  • The Numatic CTD-572 Carpet Cleaner has become popular as a contractor’s machine, providing not only exceptional power and performance required for this kind of application but also the ruggedness needed to take on the strings and arrows of commercial life. (Janitorial Direct (UK), product description, retrieved 2008-08-26)
  • Likewise, the Romanians’ yearning to keep their identity through Christian faith, as a people confronted constantly with the “strings and arrows” of fate, their need for stability and security may account for the great number of churches and monasteries raised all over the country. (Orthodoxphotos.com, retrieved 2008-08-27)
  • Over at John August’s blog, he brought in this recent LA Times article, There follows a great discussion on the strings and arrows of a novelist’s demands and furies after a novel was adapted into an underperforming film. (personal blog entry, Dec 12, 2006)

Analyzed or reported by:

The Eggcorn Database has listed _stings and arrows_ for over 3 years, but _strings and arrows_ eluded us for a long while, even though it arguably makes just as much sense.

Many web hits are, of course, for literal (bow) strings and arrows, but searching for the sequence “strings and arrows of” we can estimate the frequency of this reshaping as about half that of the _stings and arrows_ citational eggcorn.

| Comments Off link | entered by Chris W. (admin), 2008/08/27 |

strait » straight

Chiefly in:   straightjacket, straight-laced, Straight(s) of X

Classification: English – nearly mainstream

Spotted in the wild:

  • “…loosening a few strings of the economic straightjacket” (John Fischer, Harper's, July 1972)
  • “… showed up a straight-laced … church” (Dennis Farney, Wall Street Journal, 12 Nov. 1981)
  • “On the west, however, rise the Rocky Mountains, that immense range which, commencing at the Straights of Magellan, follows the western coast of Southern …” (link)
  • “… Northumberland Strait (X6-5) and the Straight of Belle Isle (X3-4, which was undoubtedly poorly sampled); Chaleur Bay (X6-4) was also significantly …” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • James Cochrane (Between You and I)
  • Paul Brians (Common Errors in English Usage)

The adjective “strait” ‘narrow, tight’ is pretty much restricted in modern English to the two expressions “straitjacket” and “strait-laced”, which most speakers seem to find opaque; its homophone “straight” at least makes some sense, especially in “straight-laced”, where there’s some possible connection to “straight” ‘conventional’. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (from which the two examples above come) notes: “The straight- spellings originated as errors, and they are still regarded as errors by many people [AMZ: Brians and Cochrane among them]. Because of their common occurrence in reputable publications, however, they are recognized as standard variants in almost all current dictionaries.”

Raw Google web hits on 10 April 2005 have the historical “straitjacket” over “straightjacket” by only 2 to 1, roughly (231k to 103k), but the innovative “straight-laced” over “strait-laced” by a similar ratio (104k to 47.8k).

[Added 24 August 2005: David’s comment, below, notes the correct “Straits of Magellan”. But this “strait”, too, very often turns up as “straight”: the Straights of Magellan, the Straight of Belle Isle (oddly paired with Northumberland Strait in the cite above), etc.]

| 7 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2005/04/10 |

slings » stings

Chiefly in:   stings and arrows

Classification: English – citational

Spotted in the wild:

  • To be or not to be that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing them, end them. (TPCN Great Quotations)
  • Sovereignties are often seen in a battle arrayed in shining armor and civilizations tend to fall between these tools and suffer the stings and arrows of misfortune. (UNESCO)
  • Liberals have since the founding of this country moved it FORWARD. Unflinchingly and with tremendous courage. They have taken the stings and arrows of their fellow man and turned them into the reason for their struggle. (link)

“stings and arrows” gets 331 hits on Google

“slings and arrows”, gets 130,000 hits on Google

The original is from Hamlet’s Shakespeare, and it is a biblical reference, I believe.

On the SHAKSPER mailing list, Hardy M. Cook reports:

> But this time I got up and pulled down Harold Jenkins’s Arden edition and
checked his footnotes. Although Jenkins suspects that the line should read
“stings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” he cites no examples of the arrows
of fortune. (Neither does the Furness variorum.)
>
> I checked the OED1 under “slings,” and found example after example of the union
of “slingers and archers, slings and bows”–the light artillery of
pre-gunpowder warfare. Jenkins found only one example in Golding’s translation
of Caesar’s Gallic Wars. I see no need for an emendation of
“slings” to “stings.” Under “fortune,” I found no reference to “fortune’s
arrows.” […]
>
> Both “slings” and “arrows” had a figurative use by Shakespeare’s time (and
probably much earlier), indicating the “power” of certain abstractions. So, one
could talk about, say, the slings of conscience. Perhaps there was no
tradition in which Fortune was pictured as an archer.

See also _strings and arrows_.

| 1 comment | link | entered by glyphobet, 2005/02/22 |
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