Kempting secrets

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Sat Oct 7 14:06:34 UTC 2006


At 10/7/2006 12:19 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>Or could it be spellchecker-generated?
>
>My speculation here:
>
>http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003647.html

which observes:
>Google turns up several dozen additional unkempt secrets, and there
>are even more unkempt promises, or promises unkempt. Some examples
>appear to be intentionally playful substitutions, but many others
>are clearly slipups, either of the mental or computer-generated
>variety. In such cases it can be difficult to delineate what is
>poetic, what is eggcornish, and what is Cupertinoesque.

Unkempt promises:  Those made by the 1996 Republican candidate for
vice-president?  (No Google hits.)  Or those made by myself to go
soon to the hair salon?

Joel

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