Supply spiders

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Barbara Philips Long writes:

Apple and other autofill writing software have contributed a lot to eggcorns, I suspect. I enjoyed this comment about supply-siders, which called them "supply spiders":

I am now imagining Carl Icahn as a supply spider.

I suspect that Barbara is right to attribute this coinage to someone's autocorrect function, in which case it would be an example of what Ben Zimmer suggested we call a Cupertino ("The Cupertino Effect", 3/9/2006). Of course it might also be a consciously-intended insult.

The fact that there are a few other examples Out There doesn't settle the issue:

[link] What is the supply-spiders argument for lowering tax rates?
[link] This omission of just one of several viable state revenue options exposes the amorality of the supply spiders like the Commissioner and the Sheriff.
[link] As an aside, even during the Reagan era, unemployment remained stubbornly high, not falling permanently below 8% until Q2 or Q3 1986, four years after the supply-spiders passed significant tax reform in 1982 (effective 1983)
[link] In this case, the supply spiders were aided by all three.

Though this one is definitely intentional:



19 Comments

  1. Tania said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 7:57 am

    Not an autocorrect thing, but I used to have an author who always wrote "snivel serpents" instead if civil servants.

    [runs to add to autocorrect now]

  2. Supply spiders • Zhi Chinese said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 8:13 am

    […] Source: Language Supply spiders […]

  3. Victor Mair said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 8:17 am

    I agree with Tania that this is not a Cupertino. I think it's human induced, something like an unconscious Spoonerism, where the "p" of the first word is displaced / repeated in the second word. In proofing my own and others' typescripts, I often come across such funny typos.

    What's particularly interesting to me is that this kind of phonetic error indicates that when we are typing we are at some level sounding out the words in our mind. I'm certain that is the case with me. As I type very fast, I'm pronouncing the words in my head as my fingers dance over the keys.

  4. Adrian Morgan said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 8:24 am

    Ancient supply spiders can be found at GPS coordinate 35.909781, -114.062250 #nottooobscureforlanguageloggers

  5. Robert Coren said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 10:58 am

    The absence of hyphen leads me to suspect that the writer typed "supply siders", and the spell-checker, not recognizing "siders" as a stand-alone word, "corrected" it, whereas it might well have left "supply-siders" alone.

  6. Victor Mair said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 12:54 pm

    @Robert Coren

    Two of the four links provided by Mark about 3/4s of the way through the o.p. do have hyphens.

  7. Victor Mair said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 1:03 pm

    @Adrian Morgan

    I went to those coordinates and found a desolate, barren, undeveloped place about 60 miles east of Las Vegas.

  8. Gregory Kusnick said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 1:06 pm

    Perhaps Amazon will soon be using supply spiders to load their delivery drones.

    [(myl) In retrospect, I regret my decision to suppress the fantasy text that contributes this:

    I was right at the forest, when I was ambushed by a few Walump commandos. I shoved out nine or so arrows from my quiver. In five seconds, all of the arrows were lodged in the heads of the Walumps. I leaped over their pumpkin carcasses and saw the herd of spiders. About eighty or so. Fifty cavalry spiders and thirty so supply spiders. […]

    The airship rained steel bullets and arrows on us as we glided across the grass up the forest hillside. The Shogore were firing up arrows while riding. It was my job to prevent the supply spiders from being shot, or from going off course."

    ]

  9. Chas Belov said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 2:30 pm

    @Victor Mair
    I'm guessing that's Area 51.

  10. Adrian Morgan said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 3:40 pm

    @Victor @Chas It doesn't feel like a whole year ago that http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=23488 was posted on Language Log, but that's what I was referring to (ancient.supply.spiders).

  11. Q. Pheevr said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 10:39 pm

    What I want to know is, can supply spiders supply ciders?

  12. Adrian Morgan said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 11:41 pm

    @Q. Pheevr: The size of supply spiders supplying ciders surprises science.

  13. John Swindle said,

    January 16, 2017 @ 11:44 pm

    And yet, if you go to those coordinates in Google Maps, switch to the Earth view, and zoom in, you'll sure enough see those spiders.

  14. Jenny Chu said,

    January 17, 2017 @ 3:10 am

    If you and I are sounding out words as we type: what's going on in the head of someone typing in (say) Cangjie?

  15. Keith Robinson said,

    January 17, 2017 @ 5:02 am

    I am not surprised that Victor hears the sounds in his head as he types because audiation is a common phenomenon among musicians. ( Audiation is a term Edwin Gordon coined in 1975 to refer to comprehension and internal realization of music, or the sensation of an individual hearing or feeling sound when it is not physically present.)What is intriguing would be to know whether blind people reading braile use audiation.

  16. Terry Collmann said,

    January 17, 2017 @ 8:41 am

    Supple supply spiders supply ciders for supping by supplicant subtle ants

  17. ajay said,

    January 17, 2017 @ 10:40 am

    Supply spiders are common in civilian use, but the military prefers to maintain, if possible, the advantage conferred by the Elephant of Supplies.

  18. DWalker07 said,

    January 17, 2017 @ 10:48 am

    Can supply spiders supply tuffets?

  19. Andrew Bay said,

    January 17, 2017 @ 12:38 pm

    @Keith Robinson
    One of my conversation starter questions is "When you read, do you have a narrator reading aloud to you in your head or do you just get it?"

    Generally, speed readers reply with "just get it" while most people answer with a voice in their head reading the words.

    (Follow up questions are:
    Does your narrator voice echo the words that people talking to you are saying? (I generally do this for unfamiliar or heavily accented speakers.)
    Can you ignore your narrator and day-dream something else and then realize a half-paragraph later that you weren't listening? (Yes…)
    )

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