In the latest (September 26) University South News (Palo Alto CA), Eileen Meyer has collected mis-steps in the Palo Alto Weekly‘s “Town Square” column:
[about city salaries] “…do not believe their exuberant salaries are justified.”
I shutter to think what you would do if you …
Eat to you’re heart’s greasy contempt.
I BOYCOTT TARGET for being greety
… make our voices known to the City Council and undue the damage that has already been done
Some of these are old friends: exuberant for extravagant is in the Eggcorn Database here, shutter for shudder here, undue for undo in the entry here for the opposite substitution. Contempt for content and greety for greedy are new to me; I don’t see a semantic motivation for the substutions, but both are phonologically motivated.
Greasy in heart’s greasy contempt is something of a puzzle, especially without any context. There are some occurrences on the web of greasy contempt, but they all seem to be about contempt, not being contented. Maybe greasy was intended literally, as a reference to greasy food, or maybe it was another substitution for greedy.
That leaves YOU’RE for YOUR — an extremely common spelling error.
September 29, 2009 at 12:38 pm |
Maybe one of those greeters at Target was too aggressive with those flyers — so he was too greety.
October 3, 2009 at 3:02 pm |
I was thinking “exuberant” here was more likely a malapropism for “exorbitant”
October 4, 2009 at 12:40 pm |
To Globe: yes, exorbitant is a much more likely model for exuberant than extravagant is, and that in fact is what the ecdb entry suggests.
The ecdb entry also marks exuberant as “dubious” — dubious as an eggcorn, that is. But it’s a malapropism.
October 4, 2009 at 4:45 pm |
[…] By arnoldzwicky In an earlier posting, I reported on an instance of contempt for content, in the expression to your heart’s […]
October 12, 2009 at 7:19 pm |
“Eat to your heart’s contempt.” could be deliberate: “Yes, our food is artery-clogging. That’s why it tastes good.”