misnomer 'misconception'

[George Thompson]

I remember noticing this once, used by a former colleague who moved on probably 10 years ago.  For what it's worth, she was a black woman from Alabama, 35-40 at the time, with at least a MLS, possibly with a 2nd master's.  I don't recall what idea it was that was a misnomer, though it was said in response to a half-joking (or fully joking) statement I had made.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Thursday, October 21, 2004 2:10 pm
Subject: misnomer 'misconception'

> Heard on KQED's Forum call-in show this morning (10/21/04), from the
> American Independent Party candidate for president:
> -----
> That's really a misnomer, Bob.  Libertarians are really...
> -----
>
> This is "misnomer" '(popular) misconception, misunderstanding', a
> usagei've heard a few times before.  Older usage manuals seem not
> to have
> noticed it; I did a quick survey of twenty or so of them.  It does
> appear in Lovinger's Penguin Dictionary of American Usage and Style
> (2000):
> -----
> A guest on a TV interview show said that Henry Kissinger was born in
> the United States, not in Germany as many people thought.  "It's a
> common misnomer," he said.
> -----
>
> It's not in Garner's first edition (A Dictionary of Modern American
> Usage (1998)), but makes it into the second (Garner's Modern English
> Usage (2003)), with several cites.  Garner describes it as "a kind of
> misnomer based on a misconception".
>
> Googling on
> misnomer misconception
> provides quick a few perfectly standard uses of the two words in
> conjunction with one another, plus a fair number in which they're
> treated as (rough) synonyms:
> -----
> Law Offices of Anthony W. Hernandez (Webster TX)
>
> You, as railroad employees, are not covered by the various state
> compensation laws. This misnomer or misconception has worked to the
> disadvantage of many employees like yourself, by having the belief
> thatthey are cover by Workman's Compensation and that they will
> automatically recover benefits without showing more than merely having
> been injured on the job.
> (http://www.rrlawyer.com/rr/anthony_hernandez_fela.html)
> -----
>
> These are especially interesting.  "Misconception" is pretty
> transparent semantically (once you pick out the right sense of
> "conceive"), but "misnomer" is not (unless you're a Latinist).  So you
> can get the mistake sense of "misnomer" from context, without
> understanding that it refers to a very specific sort of mistake.  You
> can also appreciate the fact that "misnomer" is not very frequent and
> seems to be rather technical or learne'd.  Put those observations
> together and you've got "misnomer" or a high-style variant of
> "misconception".
>
> The mistake in all of this is misjudging the referential scope of
> "misnomer" from hearing it in context -- a common enough (and entirely
> understandable) sort of error that often results in semantic change.
> Then, of course, we have occurrences of the broad "misnomer" in formal
> contexts, which others can model in their own speech and writing.
>
> i'd guess that this one's gonna spread fast.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>