tack the duck on the track

I was invited by my friend, Hart Woolery, to join thefacebook group I Wanted Sex/Money/Power From Hart When He Becomes Rich/Famous, So I Joined This Group (you must have an account to view it). Knowing I belonged to that group, I visited the group's page, and noticed the following in the announcement box: If you want to be an officer, state your title and if He is not too busy feeling grand and powerful, He will dismount from His high horse to anoint you. Also, not explicitly stated, but implied in the title of this group, those who join are also entitled to (in the place of sex/money/power): vast tracks of land, camels, virgin nubiles, and my grandmother's phone number.

Maybe I'll ask for the title of The Blob, my title during our first year RA'ing together. But anyway, the thing I first noticed was the presence of an eggcorn. It reminded me of the first time I ever heard "tract of land". My dad is a surveyor and when I was 11 or 12 I remember asking him about why it is called a "track". He then explained that it's spelled differently, and ever since I've had the fortune of knowing the difference between the two. :) I decided to google "track|tracks of land" and found a good amount of hits (20,600). In comparison, the query "tract|tracts of land" gave 734,000 hits. I figure that a "track" of land reminds people of "track and field" or a railroad track.

Anyway, this got me thinking about some other ct >> ck changes that might be from eggcorns. pact >> pack has already been shown, but there are a couple that I noticed just recently. one of them is tact >> tack. "he|she has no tack" had only 46 ghits, while "he|she has no tact" only has 592 ghits. among the hits for "he|she has no tack", only 8 were actually shown by google, a few being:

• She has NO TACK. Seriously. She makes fun of her kids when they are going through puberty. found here
• He has no tack and speaks without regard for the cosequences of his statements. found here
• Again the conversation ends with hermione going off angry and ron still clearly clueless that he has no tack :D found here

Another one I noticed was just today, as I was out surveying with my dad in Joshua Tree. There are two things my dad says can fix almost anything: duct tape and twine. altho' i knew "tract" from "track" by the time i was a teenager, i didn't know "duct" from "duck" until the end of high school. I blame this on the Duck Products company, which makes a major brand of duct tape called Duck tape. Ken Lakritz was the first to notice that this might be an eggcorn, but no one has given it a full entry on the eggcorn database. When I looked at the OED Online, it gave "duck" as the probable original:duct tape orig. N. Amer. [perh. an alteration of earlier *duck tape s.v. DUCK n.3], a strong cloth-backed waterproof adhesive tape, originally used for sealing joints in heating and ventilation ducts, and (later) for holding electrical cables securely in place, now in widespread general use esp. to repair, secure, or connect a range of appliances, fixtures, and equipmentThis site, by answering who invented duck tape, seems to give a good explanation on why it wouldn't fit the eggcorn category. So, unfortunately, because of OED and this site, I don't think there's any solid evidence to support it being an eggcorn. :(

[update: tact>>tack was already in the Eggcorn Database, with the chief usage being "take another tact".]

I didn't have comments configured a day ago, but Chris Waigl wrote to me the following:

You describe precisely why "Duck/duct tape" isn't in the Eggcorn Database. There are still some obscure corners in the etymology, but one thing it isn't is a simple eggcorn.In any case, the Duck brand came into this fairly early on. And all three of the gaffers/sound technicians of my acquaintance swear that Duck tape is the correct, traditional use. Not that this makes them right, but it's an additional complexity. And all three of the gaffers/sound technicians of my acquaintance swear that Duck tape is the correct, traditional use. Not that this makes them right, but it's an additional complexity.

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