Whadda hell?

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Tue Oct 10 23:37:07 UTC 2006


On Oct 10, 2006, at 3:41 PM, Chris F Waigl wrote:

> George Thompson wrote:
>
>> ... a Hobbesian dilemma...

>> .
>>
> Google has something. I remember having exchanged a few e-mails with
> Mark Liberman about this some time ago -- it seemed to me that users
> were grasping for an English equivalent of the French choix cornélien,
> different from the classical Hobson's choice between something
> sub-standard and nothing at all. Googling... here's the Language Log
> posting http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/
> 001909.html .

even better, the entry on chris's own ecdb (written by me, with
references to liberman's Language Log piece and our discussion on ADS-
L):

   http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/593/hobbesian/

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