"feint praise"--eggcorn?

[Garson O'Toole]

Arnold Zwicky
> not in ecdb or mentioned in the Eggcorn Forum.
> either no one had come across examples, or people
> (quite reasonably) dismissed it as a simple spelling
> confusion and not anything eggcornish (what semantics
> would _feint_ contribute to the expression?).

Below is text from a webpage discussing confusion between faint and feint:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/34/messages/1160.html

[Begin excerpt]
Re: Faint/Feint

Posted by David FG on September 19, 2004

In Reply to: Faint/Feint posted by Bookworm on September 19, 2004

: In Fallen's post below he says "Praised with faint damn..." I've
heard of the phrase "feint praise" (though I haven't seen it spelled
out) and I always took it to mean that the praise was faked, hence the
correct word would be "feint". Or, was it supposed to "faint" as in
with only a slight trace?

The original phrase is indeed, 'Damned with faint praise'. It means to
pretend to praise something or someone, but using such modest (slight)
language as to be, in reality, criticising. For example:

'Your latest theory is adequate, Professor Hawking'.

The version 'Praising with faint damns' is a humorous inversion.

DFG
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "feint praise"--eggcorn?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jul 14, 2012, at 4:45 AM, Stephen Goranson wrote:
>>
>> From "faint praise"?
>> Apparently not in the eggcorn database. GB gives "about 277 results."
>
>> "Rowan, who received his DPhil a few years before me (in the area then normally called Ñpatristicsâ) when he was at Wadham and I was at Keble, have only one thing in common: we wrote poetry.  His is good and mine is bad.  That is not a plea for mercy and feint praise;
>
> not in ecdb or mentioned in the Eggcorn Forum.  either no one had come across examples, or people (quite reasonably) dismissed it as a simple spelling confusion and not anything eggcornish (what semantics would _feint_ contribute to the expression?).
>
> arnold
>
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