"entomology" = etymology or linguistics; "heresay"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Apr 7, 2007, at 4:48 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> Both of these are common among the teeming masses, but here they
> are in the work of a prof:...

entomology/etymology is frequent enough to have made it into into
Brians.  it's not an eggcorn, but just a confusion between words
spelled similarly and sharing some morphological element  (like
biography/bibliography).

"heresay" isn't in Brians (or the ecdb).  back on 2/17/06 Victor
Steinbok noted (in e-mail to me) that "hearsay" got 4,740,000 hits
and "heresay" 146,000 (though some of these are *about* the
misspelling).  i could *swear* i've seen it discussed, but i don't
find a record of it in any obvious place.

i did, however, find a posting to ADS-L by Grant Barrett on 9/23/99:
According to the article and others, the text that was published
before was heresay, rather than from the original document. I would
imagine there was bad reporting involved right after the shooting:
the power of a scoop often outweighs accuracy. Also, this was only
one passage from the journal. The quotes published right after the
shootings may have been an amalgamation from disparate parts of the
journal.

in any case, "heresay" might, at least sometimes, be an eggcorn.

arnold

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