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.
420
Commentary by Rick Bolger , 2005/06/06 at 7:40 pm
Stone Hedge
Two women at work asking me about rock formations…
“Have you ever seen the real famous one out west shaped like an M?” So I’m
trying to figure out what she’s talking about, and after she says “I think
they call it Hedgehog,” of course she’s referring to Stonehenge. So I ask
her if she means Stonehenge, which prompts her to Google “Stonehedge.” I
said, “Stonehenge is in England, and it’s not a rock formation…it’s a
manmade formation of rocks.” Of course Google returns about 25,000 hits on
Stonehedge, all misspellings of course. Now the two women are arguing with
me, “No way, couldn’t be man made.” They ask another guy if “Stonehedge” is
man made, and he says “It’s StoneHENGE, and yes, it’s man made.” The first
lady says, no, it’s StoneHEDGE. I said, “well, no, he’s correct, it’s
Stonehenge, but I didn’t say anything because I figured I already sounded
too much like a know it all.” She replies with a harumph, “this time we got
you…it’s Stonehedge…just check on Google.” I pulled out a dictionary
and showed them, and they asked “how come Google says it’s Stonehedge.” I told
them that is just because there are thousands of morons creating web pages
who don’t know the real name of Stonehenge. The second lady took offense to
that, gave me a chilly look, and said firmly, “Don’t throw stones at glass
houses.”
419
Commentary by Anne White , 2005/06/06 at 7:26 pm
Caught in a book: “flamingo dancing” = flamenco dancing. As in, “my daughter takes tap, jazz, and flamingo dancing.” Somebody desperately needs a copyeditor.
418
Commentary by christine gray , 2005/06/06 at 1:58 pm
A beauty salon in Baltimore is named “Crown and Glory,” but it should be, obviously, “Crowning Glory.”
417
Commentary by Ursula , 2005/06/05 at 5:08 am
To be “certified” as a teacher appears to be evolving into being “certificated,” a term I find awkward and adding in unnecessary complexity. According to the New Oxford American Dic. to be certificated means “to be with or attest in an official document.” I wonder if we’re in the way of developing new versions of some relatives of certified such as: Identificated, verificated, etc.
416
Commentary by Kurt Rauscher , 2005/06/02 at 3:23 pm
It really bothers me when someone uses “wallah” when they should be using “voila”. Specific examples can be easily found with a Google search, and I’ve seen it used in novels and comics as well. I don’t know if it qualifies as an eggcorn, but I find it very frustrating.
dictionary.reference.com/…
dictionary.reference.com/…
415
Commentary by Ken Lakritz , 2005/06/01 at 10:39 pm
‘port-barrel’ for ‘pork-barrel.’ I’m not sure what excessive and corrupt government disbursements have to do with port barrels, except that port wine is a needless luxury. But I don’t see the connection with pork barrels either.
examples:
Every administration, Republican and Democrat, vows to curtail port barrel spending.
www.lyonsrecorder.com/mai…
… these appropriations for local projects are sometimes called “port-barrel legislation …
www.nicholas.k12.ky.us/Ac…
Union alleges ‘more port-barrel politics than policy’ behind quiet consolidation of immigration call-centres in Minister’s home town.
www.newswire.ca/releases/…
The editors complained that port security funding is “being distorted by bad choices and port barrel politics.”
www.heritage.org/Press/Da…
It is an open secret that port barrel allocation are the biggest source of graft and corruption…
talakayan.com/forums/ index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=18
…4. The National Parks Compromised: Port Barrel Politics & America’s Treasures. by Ridenour, James M…
www.isbn.nu/sisbn/nationa…
414
Commentary by Ken Lakritz , 2005/06/01 at 9:23 pm
‘dungeon’ for ‘dudgeon.’ Especially in the phrase, ‘high dungeon.’ Examples-
Councilman Abbatiello was described as leaving the meeting “in high dungeon.”
oakridger.com/stories/092…
She worked herself into high dungeon over Arnold’s groping episodes, but there
was little to distinguish hers from the other liberals at the Chronicle:
www.chronwatch.com/conten… contentDisplay.asp?aid=8680&catcode=10
The next morning I arrived at the mess to find the Commodore in a state of
high dungeon.
home.wxs.nl/~p3orion/stor…
The left and their complicit partisan-liberal media literally have gone into
high dungeon mode over the so-called “prisoner abuse scandal.
polipundit.com/wp-comment…
The other theory states that the longer we parents object with high dungeon,
the longer our children are going to squeal with such hysterical delight.
beatles.ncf.ca/beatlenuts…
413
Commentary by Becki , 2005/06/01 at 1:57 pm
During a conversation with a work acquaintance, she was describing some clothing her son wore when he was young, that had “velcrove” on the pockets. I had no clue what she meant. During a subsequent conversation she mentioned the word again and I asked her what she meant. “You know, the strips with the sticky stuff, they use it on shoes too, so the little kids can put their shoes on without having to tie them.” I realized then she meant Velcro (hook & loop tape). A Google search of the word “velcrove” elicited 68 instances of the misspelling, used to refer to Velcro hook & loop tape. I found nothing to indicate that the word “velcrove” is a generic term for hook & loop tape; Velcro is a particular brand-name and, like “Kleenex” has come to represent facial tissue, the word Velcro has come to represent all hook & loop tape. Interestingly enough, hook & loop tape was invented after Switzerland’s George deMestral noticed burrs sticking to his dog’s fur. Wondering why, he looked at the burrs under a microscope and noticed the hooks. working with a fabric expert in Lyon, France, they created the hook & loop tape; he applied for a patent in 1951 and in 1952 started the Velcro Company. So, I still don’t know where “velcrove” came from except it may be a regional language variance (or people just not paying attention).
412
Commentary by Wangden , 2005/06/01 at 1:44 pm
Nigel Pond in #166 describes “supposably” as a Joeyism on Friends, but the joke only works because it’s common in the wild.
Chandler’s line (according to an online transcript) is: “What if I never find someone? Or worse, what if I’ve found her, but I dumped her because she pronounced it “supposably”?”
After Chandler leaves the room, Joey tries to figure our what’s wrong with “supposably”, but the joke is based on the fact that you do hear this one (and judging by the Google results, it’s one people love to hate).
Here are some genuine uses found in a quick Google search:
“Great rod, but it supposably never brakes.”
“You’re supposably different Yeah you’re supposably different”
“Getting bunch of spam ISP supposably took action”
“We had sex on all the days that I was supposably ovulating but I got my period”
411
Commentary by Adam Linville , 2005/06/01 at 1:44 am
A friend, today: “I’m not adverse to doing work if I’m sure that the reward will be worthwhile.” I’ve heard/seen this usage a few times this week and more times than I care to count in the past few years. I’ve even heard “adversion” for “aversion.”