Eggcorn: tract vs. track

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue May 2 14:01:41 UTC 2006


>I've got a potential eggcorn, though it's probably already been noted
>somewhere: I just got final projects in from the students in my graduate
>class, and one of them consistently writes about "tracts" within the
>English major in her introduction.
>
>We have "tracks" in our English major here--creative writing, tech
>writing, literature, rhet/comp--but "tracts" makes sense, if one thinks
>of the definition of something relatively small and separate from other
>tracts in the area. (I'll try to find out if that's actually what she
>was thinking when she wrote it if i see her around.)
>
"tenure tract" and "tract lighting" are not unknown either, and I've
encountered shifts in the opposite direction too:  "digestive track"
and the like are quite common.

Larry

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