home/hone switch

[Stahlke, Herbert F.W.]

That's what I get for not searching more carefully.

Herb
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>Larry,
>
>The reason I think it might be a typo, or possibly, as Arnold
>pointed out, a hypercorrection, is that home substitutes for hone in
>the sense of sharpen, not hone for home, in the more familiar new
>usage.  I googled "home(game OR skills)" and got no examples of such
>a phrase out of the first hundred or so hits.
>
>It looks like a nonce, a typo, or a hypercorrection.
>
>Herb
Oh, sorry, I was totally misremembering.  Yes, "homing one's skills"
does seem to be a hypercorrection.  Still, I'm not sorry I went up
that blind alley or I never would have learned that the BBC now
considers the use of "hone in (on)" to be part of its "skillswise
glossary".  Talk about your hypocorrection!

As for skill-homing per se, I did find 16 legitimate google hits on
"homing my skills", and there are probably comparable numbers for
other tense and pronoun combos.  So hypercorrection si, typo no.

Larry