Thursday, December 26, 2013

Tautology

The News-Sun can boast some memorable headlines. Your LakeCountyEye recalls this classic from July of 2012 ...
Hard to swallow — heroin hidden in suspect's butt
A headline of that caliber deserves to be embroidered and hung on a wall. Happily, the good old reliable News-Sun has delivered again, this week, with ...

Rep. Schneider tauts new tech in town hall meeting
No doubt this headline counts as a mere also-ran. But that's because Tauts New Tech, technically speaking, is a spellaprop -- while Hard to Swallow answers the question of whether or not newspaper headline writers are permitted to ingest performance enhancing substances, during their lunch breaks.

A spellaprop occurs when a misspelled word defeats a spell-checker because it is the wrong word but spelled correctly. In "Rep. Schneider tauts new tech in town hall meeting", the word tauts functions as a verb but lexicographically is an adjective:
Taut \Taut\, adj. [Dan. t[ae]t; akin to E. tight. See Tight.]
1. Tight; stretched; not slack.
2. Snug; close; firm; secure.
It is hard to tell what the News-Sun headline writer had originally intended to say. Any of these qualify as a reasonable guess:
  • Toots
  • Texts
  • Torts
  • Tilts
  • Twits
  • Taints
  • Toasts
  • Taunts
  • Trouts
  • Twerks
A little bird, however, tells your LakeCountyEye that the intended word might have been TWEETS ...

I Taut I Taw A Puddy Tat
Look for your LakeCountyEye, tauting a performance enhancing substance near you.

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