sleuth = slew

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:06 AM -0800 2/7/06, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On 2/7/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  At 9:04 AM -0800 2/7/06, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>  >I came across this eggcornish substitution recently:
>>  >
>>  >-----
>>  >http://ethnicloft.com/blog/2006/02/04/north-american-slave-narratives/
>>  >The University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel
>>  >Hill has a sleuth of digitalized literature that documents the
>>  >American southern history and culture.
>>  >-----
>>  >
>>  >I'm hesitant to put this in the Eggcorn Database, since I don't see
>>  >any possible semantic rationalization for using "sleuth". So is it a
>>  >plain old malaprop?
>>
>>  I was going to suggest motivating it as a blend of "slew" and "rath",
>>  but then I realized I was thinking of "raft".  Never mind.
>
>Hmm... as a matter of fact, "wrath" is a not infrequent alteration of
>"raft" = 'large number (of things)':

So it's not just me.  Actually, I tried checking under "rath of" and
found nothing.  I never even thought of googling "wrath of".  Some of
these are self explanatory--"a wrath of new printers", "a wrath of
inconsiderate cousins", "a wrath of criminal activity"--as if "wrath"
is one more entry in the...well, raft of those motivated specialized
collectives along with those gaggles of geese,  exaltations of larks,
and murders of crows.  Curiously, one of the collectives occasionally
advanced   is "a sleuth of bears".

Larry

>-----
>http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1262
>WC Varones notes the irony for McCain - whose Gang of 14 allowed a
>wrath of pro
>1st Amendment jurists to be seated on benches that will.. - Well, I
>won't steal
>his thunder.
>-----
>http://magic-city-news.com/article_3268.shtml
>Prior to 9/11 we as citizens and legal residents of the US were already forced
>to deal with a wrath of criminal activity.
>-----
>http://spaces.msn.com/ninjapiratelair/Blog/cns!A0149FF2E17945E0!1320/
>a 'wrath' of updates have occured.
>-----
>http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news.php?newsId=47
>Canon announce a wrath of new printers
>-----
>http://nitwittery.blogspot.com/2004/02/what-tick-said-to-tock.html
>The fog was dense and the traffic, like a wrath of inconsiderate
>cousins suddenly
>descending on my home.
>-----
>
>This substitution is probably influence by "wrath of God", "The Wrath
>of Khan", etc., and in many cases is recognizably an eggcorn (when
>"wrath" is quantifying something potentially wrathful).
>
>So perhaps "sleuth" is a second-order eggcorn, blending "slew" with
>eggcornic "wrath".
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org