"shrew" eggcorn?

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Sun Apr 20 17:18:33 UTC 2008


At 4/20/2008 12:59 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>i wasn't claiming to have found some new phenomenon.  just some cases
>i hadn't been aware of before.  plus "shrew" for "shrewd", which might
>just be lexicalized t/d-deletion or might be a malapropism (probably
>not of the eggcorn variety, because it's hard to see a semantic
>motivation).

Going back to James Landau's original
>"Well, you have to give Democrats points for both genuine
>sentiment and shrew poltiical planning."

and my (denied) deconstruction, the semantic motivation is clearly to
disparage Hilary's gender.  And before anyone tells me that according
to the Authority a shrew can be male, let me quote "3. a. A person,
esp. (now only) a woman given to railing or scolding or other
perverse or malignant behaviour; freq. a scolding or turbulent wife."

Joel

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