passive "kowtowed" for "cowed"

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:03 AM -0700 10/21/10, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Oct 21, 2010, at 7:05 AM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>
>>  This morning on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, I read the following:
>>
>>  Scott Morgan smacks the LA Times for being kowtowed by Holder's threat:
>>  http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
>>
>>  That's the first time I recall hearing or reading "kowtow" use as a
>>  passive.   Googling "kowtowed" produced three more examples out of the
>>  first hundred hits.  It looks like "kowtowed" is moving in on "cowed."
>
>ah, a step beyond my posting here:
>
>AZ, 10/15/07: Cow-towing to Celsius:
>  http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005026.html
>

Ah, a classic!  I remember it well, but I'd
forgotten the last bit, which is relevant here.
The final stages of the eggcornification are (i)
the orthographically inspired reanalysis of
"cow-tow" as [kauto], yielding in turn (ii) the
phonologically inspired reanalysis of [kauto] as
"cow-toe", representing a kind of compensation
for "tow the line", with the extra motivation of
presumed toe-kissing involved (while avoiding
actual cow-towing, which involves that awkward
call to the AAA).

"Cow-toe" appears in the eggcorn forum back in
2005:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=78.
Examples:

Once wealth is established even socialists cow-toe to it.

There no longer exists a Radical Left ...just a bunch of sissies ready to cow
toe to whoever is in office.

... a smart producer gets ahold of a smart script
and won't dumn a movie down or
cow toe to the 14-18 year old market and produce a GATTACA or soemthing. ...
[Note the "dumn" as well!]

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org