At last. A home for drinkers!

[Baker, John]

        No, it was just an ADS-L supposition that this was a pawn shop
and that the name reflected the caught/cot merger.  It was a second-hand
or consignment shop, and "hawk" was used in the sense of the verb
meaning to sell.

        It's another example, I think, of how difficult it is to tell
what is going on in someone's else mind when they use language,
especially if we are trying to infer the existence and nature of an
error.  Linguists thought that the Hawk Shop owner was the victim of
confusion deriving from merger, when investigation showed that he
actually knew the difference between the two words (though he pronounced
them the same) and used them correctly.  There are competing theories as
to whether "phase" is an eggcorn for "faze" or simply a variant or
incorrect spelling.  It clearly is the latter at least some of the time,
but if there really are people who use "phase" because they reanalyze
it, then for them it's an eggcorn.  "Flush out" is sometimes an eggcorn
for "flesh out," but sometimes it's used correctly to mean to find and
expose something, as a dog flushes out quail.  In context, it can be
difficult to tell whether the correct or the eggcorn sense is intended.

        In contrast, here's an example I came across today, from
http://blacksheepcontractatty.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-to-deal-with-holi
days-and-family.html, where the writer really is using "hock" to mean
"hawk":  "Look at the bright side; at least you are not making minimum
wage hocking books at Barnes and Noble."


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Dennis Preston
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:21 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: At last. A home for drinkers!

arnold,

Thanks; had no idea it was out there. My favorite more subtle example
was "Otto's Autos" a Calgary used-car lot, which I first thought sounded
a little funny and then realized the sign-maker thought they were
homophones (as did no doubt most of the sign readers). Someone offered
this list an example of "Hawk Shop" from central Indiana a few years ago
(and it was indeed a pawn shop, not a bird store), just to how that
their phonological disability can have spelling repercussions in either
direction.

dInIs

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