Charlottesville Words

For some years now The Branagh Compendium has been archiving notes from what they are pleased to call the Hamlet DVD Saga. So if you’re one of the legion of fans who have been waiting helplessly for this DVD for eleven years (and counting), you can catch up on the story there.

I’m glad I checked in on the Compendium today, for I found another potential eggcorn there: ship-shod. “Although I don’t want to rush the project into a ship-shod release…”

Google lists 614 hits for “ship-shod,” with a meaning similar to that of “slip-shod” — slovenly, sloppy, like a slattern scuffling around in worn-at-the-heels slippers. I think the “shod” part of the compound is drifting away from its connotation of “shoe” to a connotation of “shoddy.”

There’s also a hit for “Paris Hilton rode shipshod over that concept…,” an apparent variation on “rough-shod.” Hmm. Not sure where that’s going.
I think “ship-shod” could catch on in the IT world as a term for a shoddy product shipped before all the bugs are worked out: “The Windows XP release was certainly ship-shod.”