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.
430
Commentary by Sean Fulton , 2005/06/14 at 5:43 pm
“when all is set and done” instead of the correct “when all is said and done”
Google turns up thousands of instances of this one. Note the variation with “after” instead of “when” occurs too.
429
Commentary by Rob Pettigrew , 2005/06/13 at 3:29 pm
From http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/06/wwdcreax/index.php:
“For years, Mac users have been conditioned to hate Intel — much of the backlash we see from users is probably due to this deep seeded notion that Intel is the bad guy.”
I would’ve expected an editor to have noticed the use of “deep seeded” instead of “deep seated”. But you can see where someone might mix that up, I suppose. ‘The idea was planted so deep that it’s hard to change…’
428
Commentary by Richard Altwarg , 2005/06/13 at 2:48 pm
one and the same — one in the same
427
Commentary by Josi , 2005/06/10 at 3:17 pm
I was reading a flyer put out by my library and I found two eggcorns. First they said that they would teach us knitting and PEARLING (it’s purling). And also asked if we could bring a full ROLE of duct tape to a duct tape workshop.
I think that the power mower-paramour eggcorn is really funny.
426
Commentary by Dale , 2005/06/07 at 4:36 pm
how about “cardshark”, as opposed to the correct “cardsharp” ?
425
Commentary by Nigel Pond , 2005/06/07 at 3:18 pm
Re 413: I could not agree more. Even better to use voilà.
424
Commentary by Nigel Pond , 2005/06/07 at 3:13 pm
“carmel” instead of the correct “caramel” for the substance created by cooking sugar. Allegedly named after the French chef Marie Careme or from Spanish caramelo, from Late Latin calamellus = small reed
423
Commentary by Nigel Pond , 2005/06/07 at 3:05 pm
Re 406: I don’t understand. Isn’t “one off” the correct version?
422
Commentary by Jessica , 2005/06/07 at 1:08 pm
Just came across this today, and it made me chuckle: “rice patties” instead of “rice paddies”. The context: “It poured for a week leading into the 2004 event, turning the campus grounds into rice patties” (www.jpmorganchasecc.com/). That’s some image!
A very quick Google search revealed that it’s a fairly common mistake - there were 3000+ hits even after weeding out the numerous recipes for actual rice patties. I guess the American flapped [t] is to blame…
421
Commentary by Nadine Fiedler , 2005/06/06 at 11:14 pm
Disassemble-dissemble
In his press conference on May 31, 2005, George Bush said about an Amnesty International report: “In terms of the detainees, we’ve had thousands of people detained. We’ve investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, you know — yes, sir.”
Source: www.whitehouse.gov/news/r…