"as one in the same"

[Wilson Gray]

On Apr 1, 2005, at 1:45 AM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "as one in the same"
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>
> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 20:44:57 -0500, crg <langwidge at EROLS.COM> wrote:
>
>> More often, I see misuses/abuses of commonly used clichés:
>>
>> This error was posted by the local news this evening:
>>
>> "The messages focused on asbestos in the school and his termination --
>> issues that he sees as one in the same, according to the sheriff's
>> office."
>>
>> Also "crown and glory" and "doggy dog world."
>>
>> Are these sorts of changes going on in other parts of the US or just
>> around
>> Baltimore?
>
> No, there's nothing localized about any of those formations, which are
> called "eggcorns" round these parts (see
> <http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/>).
> I noted "one in the same" in a thread last December:
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0412B&L=ads-l&P=17910
>
> Larry Horn listed several other in/and/-in'/-en reanalyses in that
> thread
> and in his recent "Spitten Image" paper in _American Speech_:
>
> http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_speech/v079/79.1horn.html
>
> "Crown and glory" is a good one-- hadn't come across that before.

"This is 'The G' saying 'hello' to thee, coming to you in all his crown
and glory!" Show-opening patter of George "The G" Logan, a St. Louis DJ
ca.1952. At the time, I had the impression that The G said "crown and
glory" on purpose, since "crowning glory" was - and still is - such a
literary term amongst the colored that he would never have had occasion
to hear the phrase spoken and then misconstrue it.

-Wilson Gray

>
> "Doggy dog world" has been mentioned by a few contributors to the
> Eggcorn
> Database, though there's no entry for it yet:
>
> http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/contribute/#comment-55
> http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/contribute/#comment-250
> http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/contribute/#comment-341
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>