"illiterate"

[Garson O'Toole]

Larry Horn's comment about "reiterate" inspired a search for the
phrase "Let me illiterate".

The phrase in quotes yields an estimated 18,200 hits with Google.
Clicking forward to read the second page reveals that the total number
of matches is actually 13. Google estimates are inaccurate.

Here are five sample matches:

Let me illiterate what I have said in the intro to this article ...
Let me illiterate, making drugs illegal does not limit teens access to them ...
Let me Illiterate on this really fast.
Let me illiterate, she was the one who conquered the Inca empire in Peru.
Let me illiterate, some days and weeks are just bloody fantastic ...

Google Books has a book with the following sentence: Let me illiterate
for you what I mean with some examples from my clients.

I located no matches for: "Let me illiterate about illiteracy".


On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "illiterate"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 8:00 AM -0700 10/29/10, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>a friend tried to cheer me up (some health woes again) by offering
>>the following on Facebook:
>>
>>  >This might cheer you up. I just saw it on a forum:
>>  >"I'm not sure I understand. Could you illiterate?"
>>
>>presumably "illuminate" was the target. so it's some kind of
>>malapropism, but could be either a CM (classical malapropism) or an
>>FC (Fay-Cutler) type.
>>
>
> Presumably pronounced (mentally) to rhyme with "reiterate", not with
> "Twitter it".
>
> LH
>
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