eminent/imminent

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/10/2013 01:07 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> >
> > On Jun 10, 2013, at 9:30 AM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
> >
> >> At 6/10/2013 11:49 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
> >>> Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >>>> Now that we have two, mirror-image examples (this
> >>>> plus my earlier "imminent domain"), should the
> >>>> pair of the Subject line go into the eggcorn database?
> >>>
> >>> Arnold Zwicky mentioned eminent/imminent on Language Log in 2004.
> >>
> >> Less than briefly, I would say.  Is it such an
> >> "old standard" in "MWDEU, Garner, Paul Brians's
> >> Common Errors in English, and similar compendia"
> >> that it has been omitted from the eggcorn database?
> >
> > it hasn't been "omitted"; it just hasn't been added. (I have a
> backlog of between
> > 50 and 100 entries to add to the database, but my attention has
> been taken up
> > by other things.)
>
>Yes, keep in mind that it's mainly just Chris, Arnold, and me making
>entries when we have the time to.

Considering that Arnold considered "eminent/imminent" in 2004, the
eggcorn data base may be about as far behind the "freshest
occurrences" as the Boston News-Letter was behind the thread of
foreign news in the first decades of the 18th century.  :-)  (I've
been browsing in the BNL this morning.)


> > these entries (one in each direction) will be tricky ones to
> write up, in part
> > because of the phonological issues (involving raising of [E]
> before nasals).

I'm pleased to have perhaps provoked re-examination of an interesting
item.  Or is that not what Arnold meant by "tricky"?


>I may have considered either imm->em or em->imm for inclusion at some
>point but decided it wasn't quite eggcorny, as it often appears to be
>just a malapropistic confusion without a semantic rationale. But I
>like the suggestion by "lc" in the ECDB forum for "imminent domain":
>it's "the 'imminent' threat of government's right to take one's land."

I wrote something similar here -- "Overriding the resisters does
appear to be imminent.  Thus I believe this is an eggcorn".  [These
are shore-holders resisting an Army Corps of Engineers project whom
the mayor has threatened with eminent domain.]

Joel


>--bgz

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