sparkling (eggcorn)

Adrian Bailey

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Sep 20, 2005, 10:00:22 AM9/20/05

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The much criticised bi-annual DSEi (Europe's largest arms fair) ran from
13-16th September in London, sparkling protests in and around the East End
docklands and other parts of the UK.
http://www.indymedia.org/en/2005/09/824477.shtml

Only example I could find, so (for now) best categorised as just a - what's
the technical term? - brainfart?

Adrian

Pat Durkin

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Sep 20, 2005, 10:12:57 AM9/20/05

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"Adrian Bailey" <da...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:WBUXe.2868$MD4...@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.uk...

Typo? Editor's lapse?

Still, it does grab the imagination!

Jim Lawton

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Sep 20, 2005, 10:47:26 AM9/20/05

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And definitely not an eggcorn, a malapropism't it?
--
Jim
polymoth

Chris Waigl

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Sep 20, 2005, 11:13:26 AM9/20/05

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<http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/594/sparkle/> Thanks. By no means
a rare brainfart, by the way.

Sorry to drag this discussion here -- I'm getting more and more
convinced that we need a forum section on the Eggcorn Database site --,
but regarding your comment about context, which I read as collocations
or occurrences of pairs or combinations of words within a given short
distance of each other, as a potential improvement of word processing
spell-checkers: I have been wondering whether machine translation
software uses a similar technique.

I don't have any experience with this type of technology, and it is
clear that such a checker would throw up a lot of false positives, of a
particularly annoying type for those who master the words they employ.

On the other hand, a simple prototype could easily be coded.

Chris Waigl

--
blog: http://serendipity.lascribe.net/
eggcorns: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/

Chris Waigl

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Sep 20, 2005, 11:15:43 AM9/20/05

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Jim Lawton wrote:
>
> And definitely not an eggcorn, a malapropism't it?

I count it as an eggcorn, because

a) the phonetics is just about close enough, esp. for
_sparking»sparkling_ and
b) the semantic shift is very transparent.

Adrian Bailey

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Sep 20, 2005, 1:49:51 PM9/20/05

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"Chris Waigl" <cwa...@free.fr> wrote in message
news:dgp8vg$qta$1...@domitilla.aioe.org...

> Adrian Bailey wrote:
> > The much criticised bi-annual DSEi (Europe's largest arms fair) ran from
> > 13-16th September in London, sparkling protests in and around the East
End
> > docklands and other parts of the UK.
> > http://www.indymedia.org/en/2005/09/824477.shtml
> >
> > Only example I could find, so (for now) best categorised as just a -
what's
> > the technical term? - brainfart?
>
> <http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/594/sparkle/> Thanks. By no means
> a rare brainfart, by the way.
>
> Sorry to drag this discussion here -- I'm getting more and more
> convinced that we need a forum section on the Eggcorn Database site --,

Good idea. miniBB is good.

> but regarding your comment about context, which I read as collocations
> or occurrences of pairs or combinations of words within a given short
> distance of each other, as a potential improvement of word processing
> spell-checkers: I have been wondering whether machine translation
> software uses a similar technique.
>
> I don't have any experience with this type of technology, and it is
> clear that such a checker would throw up a lot of false positives, of a
> particularly annoying type for those who master the words they employ.
>
> On the other hand, a simple prototype could easily be coded.

Well. I think that if I type "She ran the whole gamet of emotions from A to
B." it's _ridiculous_ that MS Word changes "gamet" to "gamete". Isn't it?

Adrian