The Eggcorn Database - v. 0.5

Another case of exchange between different unaccented nasal syllables.

A cousin to the mixmash eggcorn. Mix ‘n match no doubt contributes to the mix.

Margaret Lee’s original report:

At a recent Phish concert here in Hampton, a Phish fan “Phish head”) (female) was quoted in the local newspaper as saying, “It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one that wears mixmatch clothing and is into other things besides cell phones and bling-bling.” Is this use of “mixmatch” for “mismatch” an eggcorn? I don’t know if this was her pronunciation or the reporter’s spelling of the word.

[Addendum: Ben Zimmer reports a discussion by Nancy Friedman of mixedmaxed as a possible eggcorn for mismatched.]

The two reports cited above are from the American Dialect Society mailing list. An edited version of the second:

I posted in 2000 about an experience I had when I was still driving back and forth across the country at least once a year, and looked in on antique shops in New Mexico, Arizona, and the California desert. Where objects labeled as S(c)ha(e)f(f)er Robes - there were many variant spellings - were on offer. Eventually, when I came across the variants S(c)hiffer Robe, the penny dropped and I realized that these things were chifforobes (”chifforobe” = “chiffonier” + “wardrobe”, itself an interesting formation).

In any case, since so very many things are named after people or places, this sort of reshaping is to be expected.

(The first occurrence is from a summary of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.)

The OED entry for chifforobe lists the following variant spellings: chiffarobe, chifferobe, chiffing robe, chifforobe, chiffrobe, chifrobe, shifferobe.

Mixmash takes the reduplicative first syllable of mishmash and transforms it into the semantically transparent mix. In fact, the linkage between mix and mash goes back etymologically all the way to the Indo-European root *meik-. The reduplication of mash into mishmash has also been paralleled by forms with mix, such as the variants mixty-maxty, mixter-maxter, and mixie-maxie from Scotland/N. England.

More recently, mixing and mashing have become allied concepts in the world of musical production (mix-master, mash-up, etc.). So it’s not surprising that mixmash often appears as an intentional lexical mash-up in contexts relating to music and technology, e.g. Mix Mash Records or MixMash VJ services. Such intentional uses may lead to an acceptance of mixmash as a variant of mishmash in relevant fields — as in the 2005 example above, from the README file for Postfish (”a digital audio post-processing, restoration, filtering and mixdown tool”).

Meanwhile, the variant mix(-)mosh suggests two additional contributing factors: the Yiddish-influenced pronunciation of mishmash as [mɪʃmɑʃ] (often spelled mishmosh) rather than [mɪʃmæʃ], and the newer sense of mosh to describe slam-dancing (mosh pit, etc.).

A bloodthirsty eggcorn. The origin of _bludgeon_ is not well understood. AHD4 laconically states “[Origin unknown.]”, and the OED offers several lines of inquiry — or speculation:

> [Not found before the 18th c.: origin unknown.
_Blogon_ (with g = j) is quoted by Dr. Whitley Stokes from the Cornish drama _Origo Mundi_ (? 14th c.), but its relation to the English is uncertain. Other Celtic etymologies sometimes proposed are on many grounds untenable. A Du. vb. _bludsen_ to bruise, has also been compared; and it has been suggested that the word is of cant origin, connected with _blood_.]

It is therefore possible — though not very likely — that users of the eggcorn are even going back to the word origin.