The comments under this CBC article impelled me to check the definitions of the verbs home in on, under which a para discusses this debasement, vs hone in on. Yet it doesn't explain this corruption's sources? I then tried http://grammarist.com/eggcorns/home-in-hone-in/:
…Hone in began as an alteration of home in, and many people regard it as an error. It is a very common, though, especially in the U.S. and Canada—so common that many dictionaries now list it—and there are arguments in its favor. Hone means 'to sharpen' or 'to perfect', and we can think of homing in as a sharpening of focus or a perfecting of one’s trajectory toward a target. So while it might not make strict logical sense, extending hone this way is not a huge leap….
The last sentence above confuses me. I interpret the penultimate sentence to rationalise how hone in could be deemed to relate to home in, so why does the last sentence then claim (per contra) that 'it might not make strict logical sense? Would an analysis of their etmologies help?
Best Answer
It doesn't make "strict logical sense" because honing as originally defined and used has nothing to do with homing. They are neither sharpening something (the first sense) nor perfecting something over a long period of time (a long-established use that started as a figurative use of the original sense).
So if we expected all senses for which words were used to be fully justified by their etymologies, we would be led to reject it in this place.
But note that this argument against hone in is described as "strict". That in itself leans toward not accepting the argument; only someone who was being very strict would insist upon it.
And it's also of the form "while [argument], conclusion". This form is used to concede an opposing point while still concluding otherwise ("while expensive, it's long-lasting and so good value", "while a potential source of jobs, the damage to the environment would be too great" etc.)
Since they've shown how one could reasonably consider this eggcorn as reasonably sensible in its own right (unlike say "play it by year" or "for all intensive purposes") then while they concede that point, on balance they consider it reasonable.