pawn off

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

a friend just wrote with an "eggcorn sighting":

My June 25 New Yorker came today ... on p. 96 we have

"Audiences, too, may have recoiled when they watched
the first episode [of 'John from Cincinnati'], and thought,
Hey, don't try to =pawn this off= on me."

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the OED (Dec. 2005 draft revision)  has this from 1763 on (up through
2003), mostly from elevated sources.  it says "= PALM v. 2. Usu. with
off, upon", which  might be a suggestion that it started as an error
for PALM.  but the PALM subentry has its first cite from 1830.

it's probably just that the PALM entry hasn't been revised yet.

but is this supposed to be an error that's become standard?  the
development of a specialized sense of PALM OFF (ON) is easy enough to
understand, but it's not so easy to see how PAWN OFF (ON) would pick
up this sense independently.

arnold

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