wheelbarrows

[Wilson Gray]

When I was a child in Texas, I thought that the object was referred to
as a "wheel-barrel" [hwiL b&@]. My thinking was that someone had
flashed on the idea of cutting a barrel half in two along the long
axis and putting handles and a wheel on one of the halves. When I
learned to read and came across the word, "wheelbarrow," I had no idea
WTF it meant. Fortunately, not knowing what "wheelbarrow" means
doesn't inhibit understanding to any great extent.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain





On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â wheelbarrows
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> there's now a Facebook poll on "wheelbarrow" vs. "wheel barrel" (well,
> it's spelled "barrell" in the poll): vote for your favorite!
>
> "wheel barrel" was one of the earliest entries in the ecdb:
> Â  http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/10/barrel
>
> i voted, and my vote then appeared on my Facebook wall, which prompted
> Doug Harris (of this parish) to post:
>
> Â >I had intended to simply state, with tongue tucked firmly in cheek,
> that Wheelboro is a small town in southeastern West Virginia... then I
> googled 'wheelboro' and came up with numerous hits ...<
>
> Doug then thought of "wheelburrow", and i got some relevant hits for
> *that*. Â John Lawler added:
>
> Â >Don't forget 'wheelborrow', which is all about asking Dad for the
> keys.<
>
> and, yes, there are some relevant hits for that too.
>
> oh, and a few for "wheel borough". Â and "wheel burro".
>
> some of this would make sense if some people pronounced the second
> element of "wheelbarrow" with @r (or syllabic r), so that "boro" and
> "burrow" and "borough" and "burro" would be ear spellings, using
> spellings for existing words with that pronunciation. Â ("burro" would
> also make some eggcornish sense, but i can't see any semantic
> motivation for the other three.)
>
> but even people who have &r (where & represents ash or digraph) in the
> second element might come up with any of these spellings (or with
> "borrow") if they're not familiar with "barrow" and are casting around
> for an existing word with a similar pronunciation. Â that would make
> these spellings "demi-eggcorns" (in which an original is reshaped to
> have *some* familiar element in it, just not an element that
> contributes to the meaning of the whole; that's treating the whole
> expression as an idiom).
>
> there are also pure ear spellings for "wheelbarrow" out there:
> "wheelbarro" and "wheelbaro", in particular.
>
> arnold
>
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