"supposively"

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Sun Nov 25 15:05:10 UTC 2007


On Nov 24, 2007, at 6:48 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> A chap I know uniformly says "supposively" for "supposedly."  He's a
> successful architect in his late thirties.
>
>  66,000 raw Googlits.

Brians has an entry for "supposably", "supposingly", and "supposively"
as non-standard variants of "supposedly".

back in March 2005, a Language Log reader wrote me about eggcorns,
adding:

   >I know this is a different issue, but (offhand) do you have an
idea of
> how widespread "supposively" (for "supposedly") is? I've only heard it
> after moving from California to Chicago (and, possibly, only from
> people I've met from the South).

i noted at the time that there were plenty of webhits, apparently from
all over.  and noted the ADS-L discussions in 2004 of "assumably",
"presumedly", "seasonal"/"seasonable", "supposably", and that old
favorite "hopefully".  (earlier this year Jon added "reputably".)

now i note that there are a few hits for "presumively" (for
"presumably"), e.g.

In fact, the music itself on ”Sticky Fingers” is eclipsed by all the
anecdotes around it: how “Wild Horses” was presumively about Gram
Parsons ...
www.dealtime.com/xPR-Sticky_Fingers_
Limited_The_Rolling_Stones_724384786328~RD-735923

and a couple for "reputively":

Either way, that is my opinion, based on my reputively unbiased
perspective. I say unban him sometime soon ...
games.byond.com/forums/LostRealm/Mafia/index. cgi?
action=message_read&forum=1&id=1339&view=0

but none for "assumively".  yet.

arnold

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list