Eggcorn?

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:02 PM -0400 10/18/05, Wilson Gray wrote:
>True, Mark, but I wasn't quoting speech. It's from a sentence in a
>Web-published analysis of Microsoft's attempts to confidence the state
>of Massachusetts into accepting Microsoft's standard as the state's
>"open" standard for future software development.
>
>-Wilson

Right, but presumably whoever wrote the sentence had stored "cast
dispersions (on)" rather than "cast aspersions (on)" as the
lexicalized form of the expression (or prefab, as Bolinger would call
it) based on his or her earlier mishearing/reanalysis.

Larry

>
>On 10/18/05, Mark A. Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: Eggcorn?
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  Wilson writ:
>>  >>>
>>  "Microsoft's position ... cast _dispersions_ on the fairness and
>>  objectivity of a  ... state government's process."
>>  <<<
>>
>>  Easy mis-hearing.
>>  m a m
>>
>
>
>--
>-Wilson Gray