Imprimatur/Impremature

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

Profits from war can be staggering. Costs of war even more so.

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

No matter what my question, you provide the answer. I don’t always hear it, but you provide it. I don’t always like it, but you provide it. Your ways are not my ways; you are like the wind – you go where you will.

Usually, though, your answers satisfy me. They address my need in posing the questions. Sometimes the answer involves a lot of work on my part, and patience to wait until I can understand the answer you have for me, or until I encounter the person or writing that reveals the answer to me. I think I’ve become better at waiting, not passively, but alertly.

I think, too, that your answer will sometimes be “make up your own mine” or “figure it out for yourself” because you’ve given me a mind to use. And I wonder whether you don’t give us the questions in the first place to engage us in conversation. I know they get my attention. I hope I’m keeping up my end of the dialogue.
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

“Please pass the pickled herring.”

[Has anyone ever said that? He certainly did not.]

D. Blog: Word of the Week -- "imprimatur" (not "impremature")

The Eggcorn Database has a large collection of interesting attempts people have made to understand words which are not familiar to them. This example, when imprimatur becomes impremature, comes from Ken Lakritz.]

§ It’s one thing when homosexuals design moral views around their sexual preferences, another thing entirely when constitutional lawyers give them the impremature of constitutional legitimacy by throwing out anything based on religion. (catholic.com forum, July 20, 2009)
§ That text has nothing to do with the intent of the other text. It tries to apply the impremature of the IETF to the proposal. (IETF pptext mailing list, Dec 8, 2005)
§ The WINO “report?” Some day, to a lot of Jews, it will look like the Warren Commission Report. Which stands out as quite a piece of junk, getting the impremature of a worthless American Chief Justice. BIG DEAL. (blog comment, May 8, 2007)

An imprimatur — the Latin can be translated as 'let it be printed' — was originally an official license to print or publish, granted by the Roman Catholic church, thereby declaring the work in question as compatible with Roman Catholic doctrine. The word is used by extension to refer to any official endorsement, or even more widely, any kind of (emphatic) approval. The semantic link with premature is that for a work that requires some institution’s imprimature, it would be premature to publish it until the imprimatur has been granted.
Impremature can also be found substituting for the word imprint — a particular publisher’s brand or label — as for example in:
“Chances are good that someone–perhaps Salon, Huffington Post, the Daily Beast–will pick up Froomkin’s column and keep it going. Of course, it won’t quite be the same. It won’t have the Washington Post’s impremature on it.”

What may be happening here is that the two rather learned terms imprimatur and imprint (both obviously close etymological relatives) blend in some speakers’ vocabulary, and the imprimatur>impremature substitution extends out to imprint.

[I notice that a lot of public figures' would benefit from having someone's impremature on what they say...]