"to the extent that" for "to the effect that"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 6/22/07, sagehen <sagehen at westelcom.com> wrote:
>
> In an interview on Morning Edition this (6/22) morning, the actress playing
> the widow of slain WSJ reporter Daniel Perle said, regarding some message,
> "to the extent that.." when clearly the meaning was /meaning/ or intent,
> *not* extent.
> THis is a common enough mistake that I assume it's probably already a
> recognized eggcorn, but my elderly browser gets the vapors when asked to
> consult the language log.

After I accidentally wrote "words to that extent" in an ADS-L post,
Arnold Zwicky referred to it on Language Log as a "doubly motivated
retrieval error":

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004529.html


--Ben Zimmer

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