Par None - Language Log

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An eggcorn that hasn't yet been catalogued: "par none" for "bar none". I've mislaid the link where I first saw this, but there are plenty of examples on the web, from the realtor who advertises herself as providing "Service par none" to the hotel review titled "Excellence par none".

The original expression "bar none" involves the use of bar as a sort of preposition-in-training, glossed by the OED as "Excluding from consideration, excepting, except, save, but for", with the earliest examples dating from the 18th century:

1714 MANDEVILLE Fab. Bees (1725) I. 306 Charity-boys..that swear and curse..and, bar the cloaths, are as much blackguard as ever Tower-hill..produc'd. 1727 SWIFT To Sheridan Wks. 1745 VIII. 348, I intended to be with you at Michaelmas, bar impossibilities.

The earliest citation for the specific collocation bar none, glossed as "with no exceptions", is from the late 19th century:

1866 M. E. BRADDON Lady's Mile (ed. 4) II. vii. 192 Your ‘Aspasia’ is the greatest picture that ever was painted — ‘bar none’, as Mr. Lobyer would say.

Today, the general "except" usage of bar is rare enough that a native speaker of English wrote to the Word Reference Forum asking for an explanation of "It's all over bar the shouting", but the idiom "bar none" remains fairly common.

The re-interpretation of "bar none" as "par none" appears to arise from the sense of the noun par that the OED glosses as "equality of value or standing", used in expressions like "on a par with". The idea, I guess, is that "service par none" is "service that has no equal", "unmatched service".

This construal of "par none" would be syntactically idiosyncratic — which is probably why it isn't more common — but it gets some syntactic (though not semantic) support from the golfing idiom "par N", meaning that N is the expected stroke count for a hole.

By the way, in that 1866 citation for "bar none", the attribution to "Mr. Lobyer" is clearly meant as a clue that the expression, like Mr. Lobyer, is not quite the thing. The immediately following paragraph begins:

The little bit of slang escaped poor Flo's lips in the midst of her sentiment; but the painter was too deeply moved to be cognisant of the vile phrase which concluded his daughter's exordium. He took her up in his arms and kissed her tenderly.

Here's the passage introducing Mr. Lobyer:

July 16, 2010 @ 6:14 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Eggcorns

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