Maybe I’m just being more than usually peevish this week . . . but for the love of Mike, people, it’s “for all intents and purposes”, not “for all intensive purposes”!
It’s an eggcorn — a variety of misspelling that substitutes a plausible common word or words for one that’s unfamiliar. Somebody who has heard the word or phrase spoken but has seldom encountered the actual written spelling can easily fall into this trap. Sort of the reverse phenomenon of the “reader’s pronunciation” that’s so embarrassingly familiar to us bookish types who tend to have a lot of words in our working vocabulary that we’ve never actually heard spoken.
I used to think that was a Southernism, like “spittin’ image”. Now I’m just appalled that people actually write that.
It’s an eggcorn — a variety of misspelling that substitutes a plausible common word or words for one that’s unfamiliar. Somebody who has heard the word or phrase spoken but has seldom encountered the actual written spelling can easily fall into this trap. Sort of the reverse phenomenon of the “reader’s pronunciation” that’s so embarrassingly familiar to us bookish types who tend to have a lot of words in our working vocabulary that we’ve never actually heard spoken.
Still drives me nuts, though.