Eggcorn

[Charles Doyle]

My local newspaper this morning prints a letter-to-the-editor decrying the voters' recent approval of a school tax increase. We citizens will now be "throwing yet more money into the stinkhole called 'education'" (_Athens Banner-Herald_, 24 Nov. 2006, A10).

I don't believe it's an intentional pun; the letter-writer seems quite witless.

Google gives 19,800 hits for "stinkhole" and 18,000 for "stink hole" or "stink-hole." Unlike the letter-writer's, however, most of those instances don't appear to be confusions with "sinkhole" but rather references to a very dirty or messy room or (more literally?) an anus.

--Charlie

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