Hobbesian choice

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jan 28, 2005, at 2:11 PM, Erik Hoover wrote:

> Arnold,
>
> Your post reminds me, eggcorn-wise, that on today's NPR program
> "Science Friday" I heard a caller "exult" the guest and host to spread
> the word about avian flu.
>
> Probably an overly sincere stumble but I exult you to add it to your
> ongoing research.

a lovely classical malapropism, but not actually eggcorny.

meanwhile, over on the Language Log, my colleague David Beaver seems to
have made a two-part error himself: a lexical substitution, of
"snowclone" for "eggcorn" (this is semantically based, unlike Hoover's
"exult" example, which is phonologically based), but then the word
choice errors he cites look like plain ol' classical malapropisms, with
no eggcornic tendencies.   entertaining though: "defecated" for
"dedicated" and "defected".

arnold