Eggcorn: grandeloquent

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jun 1, 2011, at 6:34 AM, Charles C Doyle wrote, on Neal Whitman's report of "grandeloquent" from Frank Deford on NPR:

>
> Or just a slight re-formation based on the same etymology--or the vowel change (which we have discussed here) that permits /I/ to manifest itself as [E] in certain environments, in some dialects--for instance, "pillow" as [pElo] or [pEl@], or "milk" as [mElk]?

that's possible; Deford grew up in Baltimore:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Deford

it's incredibly unlikely to be an eggcorn, given the man's history, as you can read about on the Wikipedia page. (Deford and i were at Princeton together many years ago.)

in a different context, it could have been a deliberate play on words, but in the NPR story, that seems very unlikely.

> If there is an NPR transcript, I'm guessing it gives the "correct" spelling.

from the NPR transcript:

As for professional loathing, Americans don't like the Heat because LeBron James, the best player in the game, got Chris Bosh, another one of the best, to go join yet another superstar, Dwyane Wade, at Miami, thereby creating a cartel instead of a team. It did not help that James announced his decision on a tacky TV show where he pronounced, grandiloquently, that he was "taking his talents to South Beach" — the most notorious athletic statement since Leo Durocher said, "Nice guys finish last."

arnold

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