"hone through"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

On 4/26/2011 11:52 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke<hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "hone through"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I found the following odd usage of “hone” on the Kendall College web
> site.  The first 100 google hits for "hone through" show no other
> examples of this usage.   There were a lot of examples of “hone
> through” in the sense of running a hone through something and a lot of
> misspellings for “bone,” “shone,” “phone,” etc..  There were a number
> of instances of honing skills through practice, and that seems a
> likely route by which this example arose.
>
> "At Kendall, we start with the fundamentals, then incorporate advanced
> culinary techniques and skills. Students hone through this knowledge
> by practicing them in real-world environments beyond the classroom,
> including the two Kendall restaurants and through mandatory
> internships."
> http://culinary.kendall.edu/academics/aas-culinary-arts/
>   ....
--

I can't be sure, but I suspect this is gibberish from a cut-and-paste
error or similar boo-boo. I would expect "Students hone their/these
skills by practicing them ..." or something like that. ("Hone their
skills" seems a popular phrase in such contexts.)

The above text seemingly has been on the page since 2009 (per Wayback),
but probably these 'blurbs' are not often read critically.

-- Doug Wilson

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