Eggcorn-like something or other

[Jonathan Lighter]

Emerson had "The Oversoul," we have "The Undermind."*  What's the problem ?

  * Punctuation modernized for the underminded.

  JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: Eggcorn-like something or other
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At 1:09 AM -0500 1/12/06, Rex W. Stocklin wrote:
>Okay this crowd is WAY too fast for me, even if Colbert ain't, but
>just today the neato lady who came over and installed my CPAP machine
>(sigh...) uttered this:
>
>They had determined from the underlining cause that she needed therapy.
>
When I mentioned my previously cited "undermind" (for "undermine") to
a friend off-list, she mentioned that it reminded her of encountering
"underlining", as in "underlining representation" in students'
homework assignments.

larry




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