"Plume in his vestments"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>  From the review by Wesley Morris of the movie "Angels & Demons", "g"
> magazine, May 15, 2009, page 7, col. 1:
>
> "OK, no movie whose climax includes a man of God plume, in his
> vestments, from the sky with a parachute is entirely serious."
>
> Either seriously asyntactic, or very clever (but still asyntactic)?
>
> 1)  Most simply, "plume" should have been "plummeting"?

My guess: it's a Cupertino (spellchecker-enabled miscorrection). If
the writer originally had "plumet" for "plummet", it could have been
miscorrected to "plume".


--Ben Zimmer

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