sing-along » sing-a-long

Classification: English – nearly mainstream

Spotted in the wild:

In this eggcorn, the reanalysis is evident only in the way the word is punctuated. The original form, sing-along, is quite transparent, so I suspect that the reanalysis is not motivated by the sense of the word so much as by analogy with “V-a-N” constructions such as Rent-A-Wreck, rope-a-dope, and whack-a-mole.

I’ve labelled this one as “nearly mainstream,” because the reanalyzed form seems to be very common. As of this writing, the query “sing-a-long gets approximately a third as many hits on Google as the query “sing-along”, although it should be noted that, since Google treats hyphens and spaces as interchangeable, the hit counts will include things like “I run out of air if I have to sing a long note” and “Feel free to sing along.”

Another confounding factor here is an outfit called Sing-a-long-a, which puts on sing-along screenings of the film The Sound of Music (”the ultimate communal nun-based karaoke“). These events go under the official title Sing-a-Long-a Sound of Music, but the second “-a” is often omitted by reviewers, as in this article by Beth Nissen at CNN.com.

| link | entered by Q. Pheevr, 2005/12/16 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by Bruce , 2006/02/16 at 10:28 am

    I have seen a cousin of this one in a department store, where they had a sign advertising lay-a-way service.

  2. 2

    Commentary by ktel60 , 2006/08/17 at 3:11 am

    I’m sorry. It’s a twentieth century neologism coined by an ad man. It is protected by what the catholic church refers to as “Invincable Ignorance”.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.