sneak peak

James Harbeck jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA
Tue Jun 12 03:41:08 UTC 2007


 From myfoxny.com, today:

----
Sneak Peak of New Mets Stadium
If you're a Mets fan, or someone who just loves ballparks, you should
get excited for the new Citi Field. Take a behind the scenes peak at
construction progress.
----

It's not a mere typo, as it's repeated. I'd hesitate to call it an
eggcorn, however. I think it must just be a misspelling. One that was
not caught by their site editors, if they have any. But "sneak peak"
gets 1.4 million hits on Google... about 200,000 more than "sneak
peek" does. I have to conclude that a great many people believe that
is the correct spelling of the word that their dictionaries futilely
declare is "peek".

I wonder how many of them believe it's the same word as the one for
mountaintop and would come up with some explanation, e.g., that a
mountaintop peeks ("peaks") through the clouds, or whatever.

James Harbeck.

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