My strange bugbear: the fusion of "ham-fisted" and "heavy-handed." Some time in my young adulthood, I started to notice people saying "ham-handed." In recent years I've seen it in nationally-published magazines.
I know language evolves, but this instance is just dumb as hell.
It looks like it's not only more common but may even predate "ham-fisted."
From the OED, where the earliest for "-handed" is 1918:
1918: W. A. Bishop Winged Warfare 30 “First the instructor would tell me I was *`ham-handed'—that I gripped the controls too tightly with every muscle tense.”
1918: Punch 3 Apr. 222/2 “Second P[ilot]... I was getting ham-handed and mutton-fisted, flapping the old things every day.”
1930: C. Dixon Parachuting 93 “The pilot with sensitive hands is a better pilot than one with nonsensitive hands. The latter are bluntly called `hamhanded'.”
1934: E. Linklater Magnus Merriman 98 “Are you trying to insult me, or is that your ham-handed idea of a compliment?”
1946: Times 3 Dec. 8/3 “There should be no ham-handed bulk purchasing of stuff which was not really wanted.”
1958: New Statesman 12 Apr. 458/3 “Much of the recipient's pleasure is taken away by the very ham-handed invitation.”
1964: Economist 11 Apr. 168/1 “The FMC has gone a bit *hamhandedly about its job.”
1928: O. Stewart Aerobatics 50 “One of the main objectives in finesse is the development of good `hands'... *Ham-handedness is not often a gift of unkind fate; it is not necessarily incurable.”
1963: Economist 8 June 1046/1 “The Kennedy Administration has contributed its own moments of hamhandedness.”
---
And for "-fisted," where the earliest is 1928:
1928: Daily Mail 7 May 6/4 “*Ham Fisted.—Applied to pilots who are heavy on controls, or generally clumsy.”
1928: Sunday Express 24 June 8/3 “Two thousand lumber-jacks were in town, ham-fisted great fellows with hair on their chests and pine needles growing out of their ears.”
1938: C. S. Forester Ship of Line 51 “God damn and blast all you hamfisted yokels.”
1942: H. Allen in Forbes & Allen Ten Fighter Boys 15 “A dog-fight with a Hun very rarely entails a considered aerobatic movement as an evasive action. In fact, the more ham-fisted the movement, the better its effect.”
1960: Times 20 Oct. 8/1 “The play's basic idea implies a less ham-fisted humour than the authors can supply.”
1964: Punch 2 Sept. 355/1 “Some *ham-fistedly insensitive moments.”
1963: Times 16 Feb. 9/3 “The campaign cannot be written off because of the *hamfistedness of its beginnings.”
That doesn't necessarily mean one does predate the other, but the autists who collected these examples would usually put in significant effort to find the earliest ones.
And of course, I always think of Hannibal Lecter when I see "ham-handed."
This one, in particular, is because people do not read. Not reading obviously contributes to a lot of these errors (along with not thinking, and not being curious about life in general), but these cognates are especially related.
It's probably because of the contractions "would've" and "could've" sounding like that, but obviously it's a misspelling.
