eggcorn glimpsed in the wild

[Laurence Horn]

"My goal in life is to pare words from overly long, redundant,
verbose, disorganized charges that have grown like top seed over
time", the judge said.

--Judge Colleen McMahon, presiding over bomb-plot trial in NYC, as
quoted in NYT 10/4/10, A20 ("Behind the Scenes at a Bomb-Plot Trial"
by Kareem Fahim).


"grow/growing/grown/grew like top seed" is already logged at the
eggcorn database with hits going back to 2000:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/index.php?s=top+seed&submit=Search
I'm not sure I've ever encountered one in the flesh before, though.
I'd speculate that there's an influence from "top soil", which does
encourage things to grow like...well, Topsy.

LH

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