Eggcorn or tip of the slung?

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:04:50 -0700, Arnold M. Zwicky
<zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:

>On Aug 10, 2005, at 12:14 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> "He was shouting, 'Eff you!' and other explicatives."
>
>oh lord!  ca. 1,190 raw google webhits for "explicative deleted" (as
>against ca. 63,700 for "expletive deleted")!  looks eggcornish.  i'm
>guessing the sound-symbolic value of the /plIk/ plays some role.

And there are 216 hits for "exploitive deleted". Some of these could be
spellchecker artifacts (possibly "correcting" the spelling of
"explitive").


--Ben Zimmer