kneck and kneck

James Harbeck jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA
Sun Sep 2 22:30:03 UTC 2007

Just saw the following on a forum for runners:

Still I'm going pretty fast and I'm kneck and kneck with another girl
in the lead.

I thought, WTF? How is "neck and neck" not obvious? I Googled it and
got 580 hits for "kneck and kneck," most (not surprisingly) to do
with sports.

Now, what the heck is a kneck? I wonder, if I were to ask someone who
spelled it that way, whether they would a) not really know, b) give
me some sort of definition -- conjectured or who knows -- or c) think
that's how "neck" is spelled.

I can't call this an eggcorn! More like an eighckhuorn!

So I Google "kneck" and I find that there are also "kneck ties"! 255
hits for "kneck tie" and 230 for "kneck ties". And I check the
defnition of "kneck". It's a nautical term: "The twisting of a rope
or cable, as it is running out." And how many people would know this,
and what could it possible have to do with being evenly side-by-side
in a race? Or with ties! It seems to be another example of people
seeing a weird usage and assuming it must be correct -- but who
started it?

Has anyone else seen this?

James Harbeck.

The American Dialect Society -

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