deep-seeded desire

Matthew Gordon gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU
Fri Feb 3 16:17:30 UTC 2006


This is the second time in as many days that I've had an egghorn in my own
mind pointed out to me. I would have said the form was 'deep-seeded' for
this one - makes more sense than 'deep-seated' to me.

The other one that recently came to light for me was 'shoo-in' which I had
as 'shoe-in' in my mind until I read the former yesterday. Neither makes
much semantic sense to me.

Oh well, I guess I'm just another indication of the declining standards of
literacy, SOTA, etc.


On 2/3/06 9:12 AM, "James Smith" <jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

> I must ask, how many of the egg-corns in contemporary
> publications might be the result of use (or poor use)
> of word processing spell-checkers.  Enter "seaded" in
> Word, and the spell check returns both "seated" and
> "seeded" - an inattentive moment, and an egg-corn is
> created that doesn't indicate the original use or
> intention.
>

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