"the whole schlemiel"

Jim Parish jparish at SIUE.EDU
Thu Aug 20 18:07:36 UTC 2009


David A. Daniel wrote:
> Unless I missed something here... MW has schlemiel as "an unlucky
> bungler" so what you've got here is, I guess, a malapropism (for whole
> shmear) as it certainly could never, ever, under any circumstances, be
> an eggcorn.

Has anyone claimed that it is? I mentioned only as an interesting
construction, that I had never encountered it before. (We do discuss
other things besides eggcorns, do we not?)

Jim Parish

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