Eggcorn

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jul 19, 2005, at 6:44 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> "Congenital defect," not "congenital deficit." Anosmia is an incurable
> physical defect that you can be born with, if you're lucky, or one
> that you can develope later in life, as I have, if you're unlucky, as
> I am. As you imply, there's nothing inherently eggcornish about
> "congenital deficit," if "congenital deficit" is what's relevant.

"defect", "deficit", and "deficiency" share an origin in latin de
+fac- 'to be wanting, to lack' and also overlap in meaning.  AHD4's
definition b for "deficit" -- "A deficiency or impairment in mental
or physical functioning" -- would certainly fit anosmia, so
"congenital deficit" should be completely understandable as applied
to anosmia.  yet i agree with wilson that it's not quite right.

i think that the problem here is not that "congenital deficit" has
the wrong noun in it, but that "congenital defect" is the
conventional collocation for the meaning in question.  that is, we
*could* say "congenital deficit", but mostly we *do* say "congenital
defect".  (this sort of thing is hell for the non-native speaker.)
google webhits: ca. 49,800 for "congenital defect", only 177 for
"congenital deficit".  (lots of webhits for "congenital deficiency"
-- ca. 13,500 -- but almost all with reference to enzymes and similar
things: a deficiency *of* antithrombin, factor VII, HFE, C9, alpha-1
proteinase inhibitor, etc., to pick a few examples from google.)

MWDEU has no entry for "defect, deficit, deficiency", but it does
have one for "defective, deficient", citing british writers from the
70s and 80s who claim that "defective" emphasizes a flaw,
"deficiency" a lack.  MWDEU says that this discrimination isn't
wrong, but that there's no hard and fast rule.  in any case, anosmia
is both a flaw and a lack (the greek prefix a- being used generally
for lacks of various sorts), so the rule isn't much help here.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu), sorry to hear of wilson's anosmia