pied » pipe
Spotted in the wild:
- An obviously brilliant flautist, he dressed up like the Pipe Piper in a dirty raincoat and played his flute whilst undertaking flamingo like stances. (link)
- Hamelin(also written as ‘Hameln’ in German) is known as the famous city of the pipe piper whose story many of us have heard. (Free-Minds.org)
- King Rat encorporates the old myth of the Pipe Piper and I really enjoyed Mieville’s version of Pipe Piper character, he is vicious, but in the end never really explained. (link)
- Our newest baby is sometimes referred to as the grandchild of our Pipe Piper (as shown below). (link)
Analyzed or reported by:
- Ken Lakritz (on this site)
1
Commentary by Anne White , 2005/07/27 at 6:25 pm
In a local newspaper article, someone was quoted as commenting on “the austerity of Arcadian winters.” We puzzled about this for awhile and looked up all possible meanings of “Arcadian” in the dictionary, and that made even less sense. Finally someone realized that the person must have said (or mumbled) “the austerity of our Canadian winters.”
Does that count as an egg corn?
2
Commentary by Chris Waigl , 2005/07/27 at 6:46 pm
I rather think this person was referring to the severe Acadian winters, and you misheared it as “Arcadian”, seeing Greek pastoral scenes instead of the Nova Scotia before your mental eye (but then, “et in Arcadia ego”).
3
Commentary by Bruce Yanoshek , 2005/09/10 at 6:41 pm
How about that - an eggcorn (but not a very interesting one) in the commentary on an eggcorn! Anne White wrote, “We puzzled about this for awhile,” instead of the correct “for a while.” Mistaking the adverb “awhile” for the phrase “a while” is becoming uncomfortably common. “Awhile” means the same as “for a while,” so the “for” is unnecessary.