a new eggcorn:preannual

[Mark Mandel]

I first saw "preannuals" for "perennials" on a flyer, handwritten and
photocopied, that I picked up at our local Farmers' Market last fall: "This
being our last Market Saturday for the season, a tinge of sadness but also
of hope prevails as we reorganize, till the soil, plant seeds, cover
preannuals to overwinter, and in the wintertime start plants in our
greenhouse."

It gets "about 160" googits, and eyeballing the first 100 suggests that most
of the actual mentions (as opposed to "let's see how many suckers we can
lure to our website") are about plants. Some ... well, when I went to the
"Virginia Golf" hit I got flashing ads for what seems to be malicious
antispyware (yes, that's right; search for "spy-shredder"), so I decided not
to even look at "DEEPTHROAT BIG TITS" or "l cazzo piu lungo del mondo".

"Preannual" gets "about 257":
 - Most are for "perennial": "And no preannual weed can survive without
light for a year."
 - There seems to be some intentional uses:
   - "Oral maxillofacial surgery center -- Dont miss new preannual meeting"
   - "Excess stock returns are calculated using a market model whose
parameters were estimated using the Scholes and Williams [1977] method over
the preannual..."
 - And at least one different error, for "preamble": "The preannual to our
Constitution of India provides that we are secular in nature and character."

m a m

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