A presidential eggcorn

[Benjamin Zimmer]

>From the President's Monday press briefing...

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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050912.html
And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was
listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been
dodged.
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I see that the New York Times and other news outlets have corrected the
transcript to read "airwaves", but I heard the briefing and am pretty sure
he said "airways" as the official transcript indicates. This will probably
enter the canon of Bushisms alongside "the Internets", but it's a pretty
common eggcorn. More examples here:

http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/586/way/


--Ben Zimmer