duel roll

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:41 PM -0500 2/15/08, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 5:22 PM -0800 2/15/08, JAMES A. LANDAU Netscape. Just the Net You
>Need. wrote:
>>A Web news page, which I cannot locate again, had the phrase "duel
>>roll" for "dual role".
>>
>>You don't often see double-malaprops like the above.
>>
>>I don't suppose it counts as an eggcorn since it is hard to imagine
>>what a "duel roll" might be (a list of gladiators who have been
>>assigned to single combats?)
>
>Sushi for samurai swordsmen?
>
>>
>>OT:  If I remember correctly, "canola" or "Canola" is an acronym for
>>"Canada oil low-acid"---MWCD11 says "a rape plant of an imporved
>>variety having seeds that are low in erucic acid".
>>
>Given "Mazola" (maize + -ola, corn oil), Saffola (safflower + -ola)
>and no doubt other -olas, I wonder if there's any reason to believe
>"Canola" is really an acronym, as opposed to "Can[adian] + -ola", as
>I was maintaining earlier today.  Unless of course all the -olas come
>from "...oil low-acid", but somehow that seems unlikely.  -ola just
>seems like a natural candidate for a commercial-Latinate rendering
>(rending?) of 'oil'.
>
P.S.  I see the last word on -ola was written sometime ago:

The Continuing Story of -Ola
A. Wayne Glowka
American Speech, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 150-156

Wayne spans the domain from the unsavory ("payola" and "Shinola") to
the successfully commercial (Victrola, Motorola, Crayola, Pianola),
from the ill-fated ("Cheezola", "Nytola") to the putatively healthful
("granola", Bran'nola) to the oleaginous family at issue above, whose
members include not only Mazola but Vegola, La Spagnola,
and--treading into somewhat sticky territory--Penola (registered as a
trademark for peanut oil in 1922).  Evidently Saffola and canola
postdated this publication.  (The interested can check out the
inspirational limericks Wayne includes among his footnotes.)

LH

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