foist > hoist eggcorn?

[Damien Hall]

In a review of M Night Shyamalan's 'Lady in the Water' by Dan Dunn, Philadelphia
*Metro*, 21-23 July 2006, p18:

'Unfortunately, Night decided to hoist this hooey on the rest of us ...'

This particular construction (with these words) doesn't register on Google at
all,  and neither does a search on

hoist "rubbish on"

In contrast:

foist "rubbish on"   c. 184 hits
foist "hooey on"     c. 1 hit

For 'foist "rubbish on"', probably not all the hits are actual examples;  for
'foist "hooey on"', there were 6 hits, so I could look at them all at once and
see that only one was the thing we are looking for.  Of course, I could have
thought up and searched for more variants if I'd had time!

Anyway, seems to me this is another one for the Eggcorn Database, where Dunn has
replaced the uncommon word *foist* with the commoner one *hoist*, because both
have the meaning of putting something on something else or someone else?

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania

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