foilage

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 14, 2008, at 2:35 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:

> Sounds like it, but it could be a misreading, a slip of the eye.

it strikes me that this one is likely to have several different
sources.  add to the suggestions already made the fact that a two-
syllable pronunciation (without the medial /i/) is very common --
common enough that NOAD2 and AHD4 both list it as an alternative
pronunciation for "foliage" -- and that there are plenty of FOLAGE
spellings (ca. 16.3k raw web hits) you can google up.  so maybe
someone who uses the disyllabic pronunciation but knows that there's
suppose to be an I in the spelling of the word would come up with the
spelling FOILAGE.

from the previous discussion, it seems that there are people who
*say* /fojl at J/ -- either because they've eggcorned the word, or
because they've seen the spelling FOILAGE, or because they've mis-read
FOLIAGE.

arnold

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