Contribute!
It would be particularly satisfying if The Eggcorn Database became, little by little, a collaborative tool.
There are several ways for you to help improve or support it, to contribute your knowledge, insight, discoveries or resources:
- Drop off your eggcorns in the Eggcorn Forum. You have captured an eggcorn in the wild? Excellent! Mind you, check that it is the right species of animal. Ask yourself whether the non-standard spelling that caught your attention indicates a reinterpretation of the meaning of (part of) the original expression. If so, in the database it goes. But if you are unsure, the forum is the right place to discuss whether your find is an eggcorn or not. The posts referenced on the About page might also be helpful.
- Commentaries on individual entries are, of course, welcome. Unlike the forum, however, the comment area is not a discussion space: It is a place to add data to an existing entry. If you wish to post whimsical observations or questions, or something that is not closely related to a particular entry, please do so in the Eggcorn Forum.
If you are committed to the eggcorn quest and have a taste for adventure, you can register and post draft entries of your own. These will be found and edited by the more experienced contributors. Eventually your submission will appear under your name. Once you have shown that you produce high-quality entries, we will give you full poster status.
Posting directly into the database is not quite as simple as leaving a comment or participating on the forum. The posting back-end is not particularly user-friendly and still needs a lot of work. I consider this project as work in progress (thus the “alpha” version label on the main page), and will add features and improvements as I figure out the needs and get more familiar with coding in PHP. If you wish to familiarize yourself with the process, you can read the Posting HOWTO.
If you appreciate this site and the effort that has gone into creating and maintaining it, a supportive e-mail to eggcorns@lascribe.net is always welcome. Or, in case you can spare a dollar (pound, euro) or two towards hosting fees and bandwidth, I will gratefully accept a donation. The Eggcorn Database is a purely personal endeavor and is not supported by any institution or commercial entity whatsoever.
Happy eggcorn-hunting,
Chris Waigl
(eggcorns@lascribe.net)
**NEW, 2005/10/25!** Changes are afoot at the Eggcorn Database. There is now a forum, with its own space for your contributions and submissions.
While I upgrade the software and work out some problems with the server, I have disabled commenting on the static pages, i.e. those that aren’t part of the eggcorn collection. The existing comments will reappear as soon as I have worked out a persistent bug with the comment display. This page has over 700 comments — some part of the code is choking on them at the moment.
Furthermore, I have disabled direct posting access to the Eggcorn Database for newly registered users. Several of us — Arnold Zwicky, Ben Zimmer, and several occasional contributors in addition to myself — have converged to what could be called a minimum standard of quality for entries. Our own early posts haven’t always conformed to it, and I have edited and improved quite a number of them. More importantly, we seem to agree reasonably well on what exactly an eggcorn is, and what kind of common word substitutions and lexical errors aren’t really of the type we are looking for. The new forum should make it easier to further refine the definition and to bring new posters up to speed.
746
Commentary by Marty Carpenter , 2005/10/24 at 9:54 pm
Candle opera, an incorrect analysis of candelabra, sold often on eBay.
Also sold on eBay, spit tunes for spittoons.
745
Commentary by Ken Lakritz , 2005/10/24 at 2:17 pm
‘hanker chief’ for ‘handkerchief.’ Also ‘hanker-chief’ and ‘hankerchief.’ this is very common- over 50,000 ghits for ‘hanker chief’ and 120,000 ghits for ‘hankerchief.’ The one-word variant may be a simple misspelling, but when writers go to the trouble to separate the 2 words it’s clear that some semantic reshaping has occurred. (Of course, ‘hanker chief’ to describe a piece of cloth doesn’t make any sense. But many well-loved eggcorns don’t really make a lot of sense- e.g., ‘lack toast intolerant,’ ‘’stalk raving mad,’ pie-line,’ etc.) Examples:
Jurgen sat back and stifled a sudden coughing fit with his hanker-chief.
www.members.optusnet.com….
A piece of dad’s hanker chief wrapped around the plug further helped seal the leak.
www.ghosttownsusa.com/tri… - 10k - Cached - Similar pages
His blood soaked hands and face were wiped clean with a hanker-chief from his
back-pants pocket.
www.house-of-pain.com/fic…
A Bicycle Trip Packing List
tooth brush; tooth paste; dental floss; suntan lotion; comb; towel; hanker chief; talcum powder. Cook Gear. cup; bowl; spoon; dull knife; pot; stove; fuel …
www.seanet.com/~bradbell/…
It used the people like you would use a hanker-chief to blow your nose; discard
their comrades when they were no longer of any use to them.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0044…
The subjects costume was quite amusing as it consisted of a hanker chief as a
mask, a john deere baseball cap, an old plaid jacket and dusty grain coveralls .
www.creyindustries.com/vi…
744
Commentary by Andrea Day , 2005/10/24 at 5:21 am
How about cheatgrass? It’s a common annual Western grass on the high plains desert of ID/NV/OR that grows early in the spring. As it dries in the summer, it develops a single sharp awn that will get into a dog’s paws, eyes, or ears, and will irritate the mouth of a horse by being driven into the gums. The horse will develop large wads of the seed heads in its mouth. I believe this is where the eggcorn “cheek grass” comes from. The other variation on the word is cheat grass, with the idea that this isn’t a true forage for horses, but a “cheat.” The last variant that I’ve heard is “cheap” grass–and it is. Generally, pasture grass hay will sell for twice the price as a “cheap” grass bale.
743
Commentary by Kevin Slater , 2005/10/24 at 1:49 am
“He got off stock-free”. Assuming the broadcaster (Randy Cross 10/23/05) meant “he got off scott-free”.
742
Commentary by A.J. Rush, MD , 2005/10/23 at 2:30 pm
What about a special category for medical eggcorns? For example, ‘dilatated’ instead of ‘dilated’. There are also many medical words which seem to be more frequently mispronounced by physicians than by civilians (perhaps because they wish to seem highly educated?): DUE-oe-DEE-num for due-aw-den-um, SONT-i-mee-ter for SENT-i-mee-ter, and um-bil-IE-kus for um-BILL-i-kus.
741
Commentary by N. Petrikov , 2005/10/23 at 4:34 am
From the Flat Earth Society’s Web site, on the page entitled, “Why a Flat Earth?”:
“The complexities of Efimovich’s theory, that theory’s convoluted nature and dependence on flawed logic and the omission of obstructions make it nearly impossible to understand at all, let alone understand why anyone would believe such dribble.” The last word is evidently an eggcorn for ‘drivel.’ I can imagine ‘drivel glasses’ being sold at tourist gift shops, with feeble jokes and trite sentiments lacquered on the sides.
www.alaska.net/~clund/e_d…