eminent/imminent

[Charles C Doyle]

Yes, tricky.  I'd be interested to know whether the spelling confusion is more common among folks (like me!) for whom the two words are homophones (that is, us [E]-raisers).  I always have to stop and think about Latin prefixes--but some speakers probably don't do that.

--Charlie

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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Arnold Zwicky [zwicky at STANFORD.EDU]
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 12:47 PM
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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.)

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).

arnold

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