The Eggcorn Database - v. 0.5

On 2005/02/16 , Scriven reported “2,150 Google hits, most of which appear to use it as a pun.” (There are now about five times that number.) But there are some that seem to be serious.

In my Language Log piece I maintain that this error is the result of treating “beyond the [pel]” as an unanalyzable idiom and using a familiar spelling (”pail”) for the baffling part [pel] (representing a now-obsolete noun “pale”). So, not an eggcorn, but a related type of error (which I decided to call “pails”, from this very case). There might, of course, be a few people out there who have managed to see pails in the idiom.

It is only very rarely that we enter non-eggcorns into the database, but I am making an exception for ad homonym.

First of all, homonyms — or rather, homophones, i.e. words that sound alike but aren’t necessarily spelled alike — enter into the genesis of eggcorns themselves.

Second, because the ad homonym malapropism illustrates very nicely what elements are required to make an eggcorn: it is a non-standard reshaping of an established term (check!), homonym and hominem are pronounced nearly the same (check!), but it isn’t a re-interpretation that is based on (a correct understanding of the semantics of) the target word homonym.

In a typical eggcorn, the writer understands the sense of the word he or she actually employs; the problem is that the use takes up the place already occupied by a different word, often part of a set phrase. Here, however, the eggcorn users don’t give any sign that they know what a homonym is. In one of the examples, the writer obviously believes that ad homonym means against the man in Latin. It’s the Latin that is faulty, along with the recollection of what the expression is supposed to be, precisely. (And spell-checkers might have had their bit to add, too. Case in point: the spell-checker I just used on this entry didn’t know hominem and suggested hominid. Ad hominid also yields over a hundred Google hits, compared to several thousand for ad homonym(s).)

The replacement of a “complicated phrase” by another “complicated phrase” is rarely an eggcorn: often, the writer is unclear about the meaning of both, not only about the original.

Spelling errors that turn on homophony, but seem to involve no contribution from semantics, are a dime a dozen, and ordinarily I wouldn’t think of putting them in the eggcorn database. But every so often a really delicious one comes along. I give you “coif(f)ed” >> “quaffed”.

The first cite was provided by Gilly Burlingham. The third is from a letter to the editor of the alternative newspaper Willammette Weekly, in the 3 February 1999 issue, correcting a misspelling in its 20 January story “Pet Peeves of Portland”. (I’m assuming the Oregon connection is entirely accidental.) I can’t see any way to get from drinking liquids to styling hair, so I’ve labeled this one as not an eggcorn.

A google on “out on a lurch” results in 35 hits at the time of making this entry. A combination, seemingly, of “left in the lurch” and “out on a limb.”

[Edited by Ben Zimmer and marked “questionable”: because of the lack of phonetic similarity between limb and lurch, this is probably better classified as an idiom blend.]

[Edited by Chris Waigl and boldly marked as “not an eggcorn” — idiom blends are interesting and amusing, but a different stroke of fish.]

I’m not sure this qualifies, but this morning on WFCR (Amherst station for National Public Radio), a reporter was talking about some local government squabble in Hartford. He used the term “holy cows” instead of “sacred cows.”

[Reclassified by Ben Zimmer as “not an eggcorn,” since it doesn’t really fit our working definition. One idiom has been confused with another due to the synonymous nature of “sacred” and “holy,” but there’s no phonetic similarity between the two forms.]