Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
A new president was recently hired by our university, and the headline on the front page of the campus newspaper proclaimed that he had “taken over the reign.” I consider this a classic eggcorn in that the student reporter confused the idea of a king beginning his reign with the image of a horseback rider or passenger in a wagon taking over the reins. In his mind, a university president is on par with a king!
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I was considering ‘tight rain’ when I saw your posting and decided to throw in my lot with yours. The reign/rein/rain confusion is abundant and I feel some of them may be eggcorns but I lack the self-discipline, the analytical skills and, I fear, the gravity to see the word from the trees.
All permutations seem to yield genuine googlehits as well as deliberate wordplays eg, rain of terror, rein of terror, tight reign, though it may well be wishful thinking on my part that these are deliberately employed as they are because of their enhanced imagery – the slight shock of the unfamiliar. Almost anything works -Bob Dylan: ‘A Hard Reign’s Gonna Fall’...
I must go now and check on ‘rain of terrier’, ‘reining cats and dogs’ etc…
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Rein/reign topic was discussed in this forum in another guise:
rein of terror instead of reign of terror by Old Word Wolf Contribute! 0 2006-08-19 13:01:15 by Old Word Wolf
Note: to locate whether an eggcorn has already been posted, you can run a search on a key word (like reign or rein). Look to the red band near the top of the web page to find “Search.” You might want to try this if only to bring up the above post. (Then all you have to do is click on it to read it).
Last edited by jorkel (2006-09-19 16:50:39)
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