Aureoles/areolae eggcorn?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 21, 2006, at 11:22 PM, neil crawford wrote:

> Eggcorn?
>
> 'Chantal touched both of her purple nipples with her fingers and made
> circles there. Her aureoles bumped out and her nipples became erect.'
> --George Pelecanos, 'The Night Gardener', Orion, London, 2006, 211

i have a very clear recollection of a discussion of this one, but can
find no evidence of it here on ADS-L, and it's not in the eggcorn
database (even in the comments).  but "aureole" for "areola" is very
common, and is even listed as a variant spelling in a number of
dictionaries.  though the words are different in their origins (latin
AREA for "areola", AURA 'gold' for "aureole"), they end up
overlapping in meaning, because in their most common usages they
refer to a disk surrounding something.

what we have here is probably just a word confusion, prompted by
similarities in both sound and meaning -- like flounder/founder,
flaunt/flout, militate/mitigate, and adverse/averse, all of which are
treated in the database either as not eggcorns or as dubious examples
of the species.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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