wineing

[Laurence Horn]

On Jul 18, 2011, at 3:14 PM, victor steinbok wrote:

> I've been following comments on Tour de France posts on VeloNews a bit
> closer than usual and I noticed several instances where the comments had
> "wineing" for "whining". One comment even included the usual crack, "I'm
> sure he'd like some cheese with that wineing", taking the pun out of it
> ("Would you like some cheese with that whine?"). Eggcorn? Random spelling
> errors? I'm inclined toward the former for the simple reason that the
> spelling includes the extra "e" that one would not expect in a simple
> misspelling--a property that is shared by very few suffixed words (mostly
> -able) and none that I know of with -ing.
>
I was wondering if there might be an influence from “whingeing”, esp. if the commentators are British. “Whinge” is semantically close to “whine” and tends to preserve its “e” in the participial form, since “whinging” doesn’t seem as though it should undergo velar softening.

LH

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