Possible partial eggcorn: portcullis >> fort colours

[Damien Hall]

On Jan 18, 2009, at 7:21 AM, Larry and Arnold wrote:

> I'd take the port > fort part of the current reanalysis to be a
> standard eggcornish folk etymology.  There are supposedly 1.8
> *million* g-hits for "fortcullis", although google does ask helpfully
> whether I mean "portcullis".

that's raw g-hits.  when i started searching through them, they got
reduced to 49!  and, as i reported earlier, none of those looked like
good candidates for an eggcorning.  (the huge initial number is
probably just the result of large numbers of references to the
Fortcullis anti-theft system.)

arnold

The earlier report that Arnold mentions didn't get through to the list,
though it got through to me. Here it is:

=================

> A three-year-old speaker of Southern English BrE of my acquaintaince
> recently said
>
> [fO:t k^l at z]
>
> for 'portcullis'...

i was hoping that "fortcullis" was attested. but all the hits i got
for it were mis-scannings or references to the British firm Fortcullis
and its product, a home-security device.

=================

Damien

--
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK

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