[Ads-l] Eggcorn: old stopping grounds

[Ben Zimmer]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 10:30 AM, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>
> ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
> >
> > While reading about "my old stomping grounds" I noticed an earlier shift:
> > stamping ground >> stomping ground
> >
> > The semantics are closely aligned, so this earlier shift does not seem
> > to correspond to an eggcorn.
>
> Also, historically, the verb "stomp" (probably) represents a mere
> pronunciation variant of "stamp."

Similarly, "chomp" started off as a pronunciation variant of "champ,"
so we get "chomping at the bit" as a variant of "champing at the bit."
Discussed by Arnold on LL and ECDB:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002018.html
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/269/chomp-at-the-bit/

--bgz

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