Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
Encountered in the wild today, and not for the first time, was the expression, “a load of old dribble”.(109 googlehits)
This I assumed to be an eggcornicated “load of old drivel”
(576ghits). “Load of dribble” yields 1,900 ghits to “load of drivel”’s 14,300.
If we take the sense of ‘drivel’ to mean ‘nonsense’ or something of no value at all, then ‘dribble’ in the sense of ‘drip’ rather than the sporting sense could indicate the accidental loss of saliva; a loss that few of us would place much value upon and therefore maintaining the sense of the phrase despite the change and entering, I hope, eggcorn territory.
I checked the etymology of both words and was surprised to find that both are derived from the OE ‘dreflian’ – “to dribble or run at the nose” which in turn comes from the proto-Germanic ‘drablojanan’ and almost to Tom Neely’s proto-Indo- European.
Does this mean that even if it is an eggcorn, it isn’t?
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Peter, you started a dynasty with this one. I count 6 reposts of ‘dribble’ for ‘drivel’. Juan’s post today on the etymology of Southern drool, with the weather report in the background, led to this:
Surf conditions
there’s been very little to speak of in Victoria. Weeks of absolute freezing drivel, punctuated by short periods of slop.
Road movie blog
although up top it was bright and sunny, I kept hearing about the terrible traffic accidents and freezing drivel in the Springs
This must be the acorn
We had a smattering of freezing dribble this morning.
Attached to the cloud of messy, muzzy, mussy, mauzy, misty, mushy.
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Freezing dribble’s pretty topical around here at the moment, David, and that early post of mine comes perilously close to drivel too. I”ve just found that the first of two definitions of ‘drivel’ in MW is: ” to let saliva dribble from the mouth : slaver”, so if I have inadvertently fathered a little dynasty, I fear it is a spurious one.
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