some kind of malaprop

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Wed Mar 14 19:55:24 UTC 2007


On Mar 14, 2007, at 12:47 PM, i omitted some crucial stuff:

> affected objects of this sort are fine with "harmful" (the OED has
> several cites with such objects, and i get 271,000 raw google webits

insert: just for "harmful to health"

> ), "harmless" (huge number of webhits

insert: , though for some reason only 864 for "harmless to health"

> ), and "injurious" (again, the OED has several cites, and i get
> 220,000 webhits

insert: just for "injurious to health"

> ).  but they turn out to fairly well-represented on the net with
> "noxious" as well (62,400 webhits

overall, though only 203 for "noxious to health"

> ), so (despite my initial judgment), "noxious to health" is a
> pretty good candidate for a contributor to Nehring's "innocuous to
> health".

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