Wednesday 11 July 2012

Taking words for granite

I was going to write a post about an 'eggcorn' (what Language Log calls misheard and reinterpreted idioms, words and phrases - it is itself an eggcorn for 'acorn'). Apparently, some people believe that the expression
to take X for granted
is actually
to take X for granite.
Which is odd. Nothing like each other, are they?

Well, not in spelling, no. But then it occurred to me that in some dialects, they might be pretty similar, if you simplify the cluster [nt] to [n] (as is common) and devoice the final [d] (which I've heard some US speakers do, on telly). I personally could only do the former, which is why it seemed such a strange mistake to me. So like I say, I was going to write a post about it, but then I googled it to get some information on it, and found that Language Log beat me to it by a good seven years.

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