Looking at my entry for “peons of praise” on my “More Errors page,” I noticed that I had corrected it to “paeans of praise.”
A peon is an unskilled laborer, or subordinate being compared to one.
In modern English a paean is a song of praise, so “paean of praise” is redundant, and can lead readers to suspect that the writer doesn’t know what “paean” means.
So it’s best to either just say that someone sings paeans to someone or something or use a different expression consisting of words that everyone understands: “He praised her performance to the skies.”
A peon is an unskilled laborer, or subordinate being compared to one.
In modern English a paean is a song of praise, so “paean of praise” is redundant, and can lead readers to suspect that the writer doesn’t know what “paean” means.
So it’s best to either just say that someone sings paeans to someone or something or use a different expression consisting of words that everyone understands: “He praised her performance to the skies.”
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