galiant effort

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

I heard "he made a galiant effort" today in a sports context. Google shows plenty of hits.

This is not an egghorn but I'm not sure what you call it. It seems like it might be contamination, which is what I've seen as the term for changes like that that led femelle > female in English. So gallant > galiant by contamination with the semantically similar valiant or valiant > galiant by contamination with vallant.

-Matt Gordon