Self-depreciation: eggcorn?

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, 19 May 2005 10:26:57 +0100, Michael Quinion
<wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG> wrote:
>
>James Callan wrote:
>
>> This phrase seems to be a common substitution for self-deprecation. It
>> gets over 15,000 hits on Google, when you search for "self
>> depreciation" -deprecation.
>
>It goes back a long way - there's a (starred) example in the OED from
>1827 and I've just turned up instances from Charles Dickens (1845)
>and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1871) among a number of nineteenth-century
>authors.


Some antedatings from APS/MoA...


* self-depreciation (OED 1827)

1825 _United States Literary Gazette_ 1 Jul. 267 Mr Wheaton refers to the
want of a peculiar national language and literature, and the consequent
servitude to foreign models and the habit of self-depreciation -- the
absence of patronage and of the aid of extensive libraries, as being
serious obstacles to our advancement in the cultivation of objects of
refined taste.

* self-deprecation (OED 1924)

1851 _International Magazine_ 3(1) (Apr.) 68/1 This was a great
self-deprecation; for Europe contained a thousand duchesses, and but one
_Felina_.
http://tinyurl.com/dkq76

* self-deprecating (OED 1958)

1850 _Monthly Religious Magazine_ 7(7) (Jul.) 310 He bursts out into the
self-deprecating exclamation, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord."

* self-deprecatory (OED 1939)

1857 G. LUNT _Three Eras of New England_ 256 If we were to select, after
that most happy and self-deprecatory opening, the portion of the lecture
which seemed to us more than usually admirable, it was the reply to
Carlyle's futile blow at Walter Scott.
http://tinyurl.com/9guqn

1858 _Harper's_ 17(100) (Sep.) 566/1 'Laws 'a massey!' said he, in a
self-deprecatory tone, 'what was I thinkin' about, drivin' you roun' de
wrong way!'
http://tinyurl.com/a25k3


--Ben Zimmer