"salary commiserate with experience"

[sagehen]

>I was listening to an audiobook version of Sue Grafton's most recent
>Kinsey Millhone alphabet mystery, _S is for Silence_, when I was
>stopped short by the reader saying the following:
>
>===============
>He didn't feel it yet, the shame, but he would very soon, once the
>liquor wore off.  He knew his humiliation was COMMISERATE WITH his
>joy, but the joy had been fleeting while the rage would burn at his
>core like the fire in the bowels of a coal mine, year after year.
>===============
>[emphasis added; "commiserate" was pronounced with a schwa in the
>unstressed final syllable, as of course "commensurate" would be]
>
>So I checked the written text, and sure enough, the line appears
>exactly as written above. Typo?  Reanalysis?  If it was the former
>and the reader recognized it as such, why not read the sentence as
>"commensurate with", which would certainly be a more orthodox way of
>expressing it?  Was the reader just trying to be faithful to
>authorial intent, or did she assume it was standard usage?  A
>mystery, to be sure.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Intentional, accidental or eggcornic, this one's a beaut.
AM

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