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

[Chris Waigl]

Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: spade cat (was Re: "like" and "as if")
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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...
>>
>>
I've had this on an eggcorn list of mine for some time, but was unsure.
I thought it might be one of those ominous spell-checker slips: spayd ->
spade (leaving out the "e" of the "ed" marker is rather common.

>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.
>
I like the idea of anti-eggcorns.

>[..]
>
Chris Waigl