More on "calvary"

[James Smith]

I have caught myself a time or two saying "cavalry"
when I meant to say "calvary".


--- "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
wrote:

> On Apr 24, 2007, at 8:38 AM, Rosemarie wrote:
>
> > ...Besides the misspelling, I believe this is a
> malaproprism, since
> > the
> > military fighting unit is a "cavalry" and not a
> "calvary."
>
> it's in most of the standard sources -- Brians,
> MWDEU, Garner, etc.
> -- as a common error.
>
> > ... None of the 10 entries, in fact, gives any
> military  connection
> > whatsoever.
> > The only connection I can think of between a
> cavalry and a
> > calvary, is that
> > having a cavalry charge at you might induce
> extreme suffering,
> > mental and
> > otherwise!
>
> surely not a semantic confusion, but a spelling
> error:  the two words
> have the same seven letters in different orders.  in
> fact, they both
> begin with CA and end with RY, and the troublesome
> part comes in the
> middle (which is generally the least salient part of
> a word, unless
> the middle part is accented, which it's not in this
> case).
>
> what makes the error like a (classical) malapropism
> is that it's a
> confound of two existing words.
>
> but there seems to be some contribution of
> phonological difficulty;
> the L-R (the hyphen indcates a syllable division) is
> a bit
> troublesome, so that there's some temptation to move
> the L out of the
> way, giving CALVARY (with a more favored syllable
> structure -- *and*
> it's an existing word) or CAVLARY (600 or so hits;
> V-L isn't as good
> as L-V, but it's not so bad) or, moving the L back
> instead of
> forward, CAVARLY (some hits, hard to estimate how
> many because this
> occurs as a proper name; R-L is better than L-R, and
> the result ends
> in the very common final syllable LY).
>
> you can see the phonological effect independent of
> the existing-word
> effect by looking at misspellings of CHIVALRY.
> quite a few (9k or
> so) for CHILVARY, with L-V; 800 or so for CHIVLARY,
> with V-L; and 600
> or so for CHIVARLY, with R-L.  none of these
> alternative spellings is
> an existing word.
>
> the spelling of unaccented vowels is an independent
> variable.  there
> are a modest number of misspellings of CALVARY as
> CALVERY and of
> CHIVALRY as CHIVELRY.
>
> arnold
>
>
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>


James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org