"even still" ?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 10, 2006, at 4:39 PM, Alison Murie wrote:

>> From Michael Connelly,/The Lincoln Lawyer/:
> "There were predators among the female ranks that easily  rivaled
> those
> among the males.  But, even still, the women I saw in jail seemed so
> different....."
>
> This looks a bit off-key to me, but I don't know if it rises to the
> level
> of eggcorn;  perhaps merely a blend.

you're suggesting that it's a substitution blend, with "still"
intruding into the idiom "even so".

it could just be "even" as an emphatic modifier of "still".  not a
place it usually goes, but that's a fairly natural extension from
some standard uses of "even".

arnold

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