Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
“Visualize WHIRLED PEAS” in lieu of “Visualize world peace” is probably not an eggcorn, but something akin to a mondegreen (misheard song lyrics). For in the current instance someone hears a phrase incorrectly, and must surely do a double take because the mistaken imagery couldn’t possibly make contextual sense. And yet, the mistaken words make more sense (in a silly way) than the intentional mixups common with malapropisms.
I mention the current example because it is the manifestation of a highly unlikely probability: two adjacent words (world, peace) whose homophones (whirled, peas) still make literal sense in juxtaposition. I would be interested in seeing other examples where not just one word, but two (or more) are altered to create a new phrase which makes sense. Does anyone know of any such examples?
Last edited by jorkel (2006-10-31 21:16:38)
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Well, I promise to think about this. In the meantime, I can’t resist recalling a particularly pompous rabbi of my childhood. Week after week he would say (reading from the Union Prayerbook):
“Grant us peas, thy most precious gift, O Lord. . . ”
Happy 5767, everyone.
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The transformation of “crap shoot” to “crap chute” comes close to replacing two adjacent words with their homophones. Clearly we don’t have a pair of homophones with “crap,” but the meaning of that word has indeed changed from the former to the latter.
Another poster mentions the double-eggcorn transformation of “whet your palate” to “wet your palette.” Perhaps this would suffice.
Last edited by jorkel (2006-11-01 02:28:00)
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