This is almost an eggcorn

[Charles Doyle]

I wouldn't assume that the two words are "merged"--just that they sometimes get confused as to their spelling. In some dialects (like mine!), "addict" is pronounced the same as "attic," so it might easily be misspelled that way. But no pronunciation-spelling will produce "addict" for "attic," since there are no dialects (as far as I know) that would normally add a [-t] to the end of "attic." That's all I meant. (I'm not discounting other explanations for "addict" in place of "attic.")

--Charlie
_____________________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:40:18 -0400
>From: David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>
>
>From:    Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>
>> Yes, "attic" for "addict" seems like simply a misspelling based on the phonology of certain dialects; "addict" for "attic" is harder to figure.

>
>How so? If the words are really and truly "merged", why wouldn't we expect some level of what looks a bit like free variation between them? I mean, it's not like one of the words is so amazingly obscure that nobody's seen it before--they both can show up on sweeps-week TV news teasers, for example. ("The danger in your attic!" "The story of an addict" and such.)
>
>--
>David Bowie

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