The Eggcorn Database - v. 0.5

On October 25, 2005, our contributor Kaz Vorpal entered the putative substitution _supe up»soup up_ in the database, with the following note:

> When you supe up a car, you are making the car super, or supercharging it. Not adding a liquified meal.
>
> The supercharger was patented in 1900.

This only goes to show how easy it is to create an eggcorn. The original form is indeed _soup up_. Arnold Zwicky supplied the following references:

> AHD4 and NOAD2 both have *only* “soup up”, AHD without further comment, NOAD suggesting that “super-” might have influenced the formation. OED2 has no entry for “supe” v., but does have “soup up” v. from 1931 (in “souped up”), which it suggests might have been influenced by “super-”, but otherwise derives from the following sense of “soup” n.:
>
> 1911 Webster’s Dict., Soup, any material injected into a horse with a view to changing its speed or temperament.

NSOED and Merriam-Webster Online also cite _soup up_ only.

_Get one’s just desserts_ has been suggested as a potential eggcorn a number of times. It is not an unproblematic reshaping, however: inadvertent double/single consonant misspellings are extremely common, as this web search shows. I have therefore collected examples that include further circumstantial evidence that the author thought of _dessert_ as something edible. This is why the occurrences employ the verb _eat_ instead of _get_. As always, it is necessary to weed out intentional puns.

When the context is that of a meal, but the word spelled _desert_ (correctly for the idiom, but an error if the target is _dessert_), we have either an inadvertent slip or a writer who remembers their spelling lessons for _getting one’s just deserts_. The eggcorn then becomes effectively a hidden one.

“Bye” occurs occasionally as a variant spelling of “by”, including in the idiom “by and by” ‘in a while’ (for which the OED has cites from 1330, in the modern sense from 1526; the OED has no separate entry for “bye and bye”). But, especially in hymns and folk songs, the expression “bye-bye” (from “good-bye”, from “god be with you”, with no involvement of “by” at all) seems to have been imported into the spelling of “by and by”, no doubt because it contributes its sense of saying farewell (to this bad world). This is pretty clearly the case in my first cite.

The spelling “bye and bye” is frequent: 45,700 raw Google webhits, as against 642,000 for “by and by”. These counts are inflated by many repeated appearances of lines from songs — but both counts are inflated, and by many of the same songs.

In a further interesting twist, people occasionally declare that “by(e) and by(e)” means ‘in the past’. This might be a consequence of the janus-faced nature of “bye-bye”, which looks both into the past and towards the future.

Googlehits for _here, here, I agree_ outnumber those for _hear, hear, I agree_ about 2 to 1.

See explanations for the origin of the expression hear, hear, and hear.

To “come down the pike” is an idiomatic slang expression where “pike” is an abbreviation of “turnpike.” (See definition below) It is extremely common, however, for people to say “come down the pipe” instead, which is clearly a reshaping based on a phonetic error combined with a semantic reinterpretation. Both are metaphors.

An interesting possible semantic difference: while a turnpike has barriers which must be overcome (as toll gates), a pipe generally does not. The original phrase using “pike” may have been meant to signify a “coming into prominence” that will occur once obstacles are overcome, while the eggcorn using “pipe” may emphasize that the “coming into prominence” is inevitable and only a matter of time.

pike³ (pīk) n.

1. A turnpike.
2. a. A tollgate on a turnpike.
   b. A toll paid.

intr.v. piked, pik·ing, pikes

To move quickly.

Idiom:
come down the pike Slang

To come into prominence: “a policy… allowing for little flexibility if an important new singer comes down the pike” (Christian Science Monitor).

—http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pike