'Martial Law' or 'Marshall Law'?

One of our listeners wrote in to say that he’d been seeing this phrase misspelled quite a lot, as M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L law. It should be spelled M-A-R-T-I-A-L — as in, related to war, warriors, or the military. The word comes from the medieval Latin “martialis,” meaning something related to Mars, the god of war. 

What is martial law?

Martial law describes a situation in which the rule of law is enforced by the military, rather than local police. This usually happens in an emergency, like a zombie apocalypse, when citizens are in panic mode, and local law enforcement can’t maintain public order and safety by themselves. They need federal troops to step in and help.

When has the US had martial law?

Martial law has been imposed in the United States in the past. During the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson imposed martial law within a 4-mile radius of his camp in New Orleans. 

In 1934, the governor of California placed the docks of San Francisco under martial law after a dock workers’ strike. 

President Lincoln tried to put the entire U.S. under martial law back in the Civil War, but the Supreme Court said it was a no-go.

Let’s jump back to the accidental spelling of “martial” as “M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L.”

What is an eggcorn?

This is a great example of an eggcorn. An eggcorn appears when people replace the right word with a different word that sounds the same (aka, a homophone) and that makes logical sense in its place. The name comes from a woman who thought the word for “acorn”—the nut from an oak tree— was “eggcorn,” which kind of makes sense if you think of an egg as something that grows into a bigger organism.

One common eggcorn is “for all intensive purposes” used in place of “for all intents and purposes.” Another is “old-timers’ disease” used in place of “Alzheimer’s disease.”

Could 'Marshall law' be an eggcorn?

In this case, "Marshall Law" kind of makes sense because folks could assume the concept was created by George C. Marshall. Marshall was the U.S. chief of staff during World War II and one of the most decorated military leaders in...

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