some kind of malaprop

[Chris F Waigl]

Erik Hoover wrote:
> I think Dr. Nehring or may have confused/switched noxious and innocuous.
>
>

This was my reading too. That or a rephrasing error ("[SIGG bottles] ...
are innocuous to human health").

The phrasing ("does not add to the beverage any particles and/or
components") sounds rather German-native-speaker to me.

Chris Waigl



> Erik
>
> On Mar 14, 2007, at 2:40 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      some kind of malaprop
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>
>> elizabeth daingerfield zwicky sent me to
>>
>>    http://ecochildsplay.blogspot.com/2007/03/sigg-update.html
>>
>> with instructions to look for "innocuous".  here's the relevant
>> passage:
>>
>>    According to the results of our evaluation, use of a SIGG bottle
>> does not add to the beverage any particles and/or components which
>> are innocuous to human health. Dr. Ulrich Nehring, European
>> Institute Nehring
>>
>> so "injurious" >> "innocuous".  i'd guess this was a classical
>> malapropism -- Nehring got the word he wanted, but it's the wrong one
>> from other people's perspective -- but it could have been a Fay/
>> Cutler malaprop, an inadvertent error in word retrieval.
>>
>> arnold
>>
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