'have / has the right away'

[Damien Hall]

Can't see this in the list archives, but it seems very common for "... the
right of way". It's self-explanatory, but occurs in phrases like

'When does a sail boat have the right away over a power boat?'

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_does_a_sailboat_have_the_right_of_way_over_a_recreational_power_boat

(NB As many hits are, this is even in a page where the canonical variant
also occurs, and the canonical variant is in the page title and its URL)

'If you see someone at that side of your car at a stop sign and they were
there before you, they have the right away. They get to go first!'

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_drive_in_California,_USA/Four-way_stops

It surprises me that the raw ghits for the non-canonical version are much
greater than those for the canonical. However, this isn't true for Yahoo!
hits, where the canonical wins by a lot.

HAVE THE RIGHT AWAY     ~62,600,000 ghits / ~17,200 yhits

HAS THE RIGHT AWAY      ~38,700,000 ghits / ~2,280 yhits

HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY   ~32,400,000 ghits / ~648,000 yhits

HAS THE RIGHT OF WAY    ~22,700,000 ghits / ~375,000 yhits

So:

- Seems to me this is a candidate to be an eggcorn, at least partially.
It's easy to see how people might make a connection between the travelling
inherent in having the right of way, and the motion connoted by various
expressions with 'away(!)' in them: 'Chocks away!', 'getting away on time',
etc.

- I remember a debate here a few years ago about which was the best way of
measuring comparative popularity on the Internet, and its conclusion that
Google hits were often inflated and sometimes downright wrong, which
certainly seems to be true here. I can't find that debate in the archive,
for some reason, though. But this seems a clear case for using Yahoo! hits
- there would be an argument for using Google hits as long as a) everyone
else did, for comparability and b) they were internally consistent - which
they don't seem to be in this case. I find it very hard to believe that
there are many more hits for the non-canonical 'right away' than for the
canonical version.

So why is it that we're not using Yahoo! hits, again? I know that neither
company is likely to go into details about its search algorithm, but common
sense here seems to dictate it.

Damien

--
Damien Hall

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

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http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/people/pages/hall.htm

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