A presidential eggcorn

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:51:44 -0400, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:40:21 -0400, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
>>>From the President's Monday press briefing...
>>
>>-----
>>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.
>>-----
>>
>>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/
>
>Hmm, is it even an eggcorn?
[snip]

Whoops! I see I completely missed Chris Waigl's valuable discussion of the
"airways" eggcorn (predating Chris's creation of the Eggcorn Database):

http://serendipity.lascribe.net/?p=22


--Ben Zimmer