spade cat (was Re: "like" and "as if")

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 13:48:09 -0700, Arnold M. Zwicky
<zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:

>On Jun 24, 2005, at 9:08 AM, Larry Horn wrote:
>
>> ... Which brings me to one of my favorite orthographic eggcorns,
>> preserved from October 1995 when we were in the kitty-cat market.
>> This classified ad appeared in our local throw-away weekly:
>>
>>      SR. CITIZEN KITTY needs loving home, spade, all shots, healthy.
>>      I've been a good kitty & promise to be a purr-fect pet.  Please
>>      call ____.  Love Kitty.
>>
>> There are 130 google hits for "spade cat", and while some have the
>> hipster meaning in mind-- ... --many clearly involve the eggcornish
>> reading...
>
>taken at face value this looks like an "anti-eggcorn" -- a respelling
>that indicates a *failure* of analysis, that is, that treats the word
>as unanalyzable.  so i've been taking these occurrences of "spade" as
>just ordinary misspellings, perhaps encouraged by some people's
>failure to perceive "spayed" as "spay" + "ed".  (for what it's worth,
>"spayed" gets more google webhits than plain "spay", but not by much:
>709,000 to 660,000.  so it's not like "spay" is rare enough to be
>disregarded.)
>
>does anyone think of "spade" 'spayed' as involving one of the lexical
>items "spade" (digging implement, card suit, black guy, whatever)?
>that would make it a kind of eggcorn, though a non-canonical one.
>otherwise, it's questionable.

For all we know, the respelling may have already engendered eggcornic
reinterpretations. And just imagine if this person's proposal was put
into effect...

-----
http://www.cal.net/~pamgreen/rescue_commandments.html
How I wish all vets would tatoo a spade symbol on each bitch's thigh
when they do a spay ! (I intend to write an article on this which will
be entitled "On Calling a Spayed a Spade.")
-----


--Ben Zimmer