Syntactic blend: "out of a sudden"

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

One of my students has written to me about a possible blend, and I now share his message with
ads-l.  He is correct in suspecting the example is a blend, and no, I had never come across this one before.  My thanks to him for sending it along.

Gerald Cohen

[message from student]:

Hi Dr. Cohen,

I found a phrase used in a message[1] on a mailing list that might be of
interest to you. The writer used the phrase "Out of a sudden" to
characterize unexpected software behavior, which to me appears to be a blend
of "out of nowhere" and "all of a sudden".

What do you think? Is this something you've seen before?

Thanks,
David Mattli

[1] http://common-lisp.net/pipermail/cells-gtk-devel/2008-April/000532.html

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