Sometimes solecisms can reveal linguistic ingenuity | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes solecisms can reveal linguistic ingenuity

economist.com

Ones I've seen online recently: tenets referred to as tenants, Here here! instead of Hear, hear!, chock it up to instead of chalk it up to, chalk full instead of chock-full – this page explain it originally was choke-full, which makes more sense.

https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/945/chalked/

I learned it as "hone in" from hone meaning to sharpen or narrow (honing a blade). It seems to me that "home in" only makes sense if you are trying to return. If you seeking a new target hone in strikes me as more accurate. Apparently Webster disagrees.

>"home in" only makes sense if you are trying to return

Under that interpretation, homing missiles sound like a really bad idea.

Homing torpedoes and homing missiles sound more like boomerangs to me. But while a boomerang returns if you miss your target, it does not explode.

Years ago I read an article about Ray Kurzweil where the journalist referred to "a Ray processor". A mishearing of "Array processor" I suppose.

I recall a meeting in which someone used the expression "flush out" and was corrected by someone else with "flesh out", which prompted a third to posit that the correct expression was "fletch out", claiming the true origin of the expression was in arrow-making. Would have been better delivered while leaving the meeting, making for a "Parthian shot".

flush out is what you to birds in a bush, flesh out is what you do to the skeleton of an idea, and fletch out isn't a thing.

An 'eggcorn' that always makes my eye twitch is 'bunker down'.

To hunker down is to take a squat or crouch down on your heels. If I recall correctly, it comes from a similar root as 'haunches'.

'Bunker down' makes sense as an eggcorn, but I find it much less romantic somehow.

I don’t think I’ve heard a single person in my life say “home in on”, it’s always been “hone in on”.

I've never heard "hone in on"! If someone said it, I would assume they just mispronounced 'home'.

"hone in on" makes no sense!

Hmmm, curious. I suppose I may have just been chronically misunderstanding everyone my whole life. What a revelation!

To me, as suggested in the article, “honing” a sense or blade makes “hone in” seem more logical.

But I’m sure my parents both used “hone in” — Merriam Webster has an interesting definition and considers both correct: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/home-in-or-hon....

Conversely (UK English, many decades) I've never heard anyone says "hone in on" (entirely possible I've read it in prose and auto-translated it to "home in on" without noticing, mind.)

More often they reveal poor intellect or hyperactive autocomplete.

There are different types of intelligence. I’m good at cooking but bad at math. Some people excel at physical endeavors but might have difficulties with language. “Poor intellect” means nothing at best. “Poor language skills” more effectively conveys what you seem to have intended to convey, although you did it without any source or backing argument.

Yeah, statistics says no. Cognitive aptitude in one area correlates very strongly with aptitude in other areas, leading the people who measure this stuff to conclude that there is pretty much one factor for general intelligence. The rest is training. You're bad at math because you're ill-practiced at it and/or you never found a way to overcome your math anxiety.

Well what if a person has a high intellect but is ill-practiced in English?

Let's say that's correct - the person you're replying to is still more correct than the one they were replying to: a misused word could not distinguish poor intellect from unfamiliarity.

I don't think there's an obligation in a comment to address the parent of a post you are responding to, let alone all the parents which we'd get if that obligation was there and transitive :)

You can also address only a part of the comment, like I did here. For instance, I have not given an opinion on the latter part of your comment.

The Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation disagrees with you, and they’ve been studying aptitudes since 1922. See https://jocrf.org/aptitudes

Reply on news.ycombinator.com