Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
A “hobby” was originally a small horse or pony, and the name was later transferred to the toy called a “hobby-horse.” Kids playing with hobby-horses often hop around in order to imitate the movement of the real animal. 999 raw Google hits as of today. Examples:
I was trying to hop around on a Hoppy Horse.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? … highlight=
So then Houston played on our old hoppy horse for a while.
http://jkmoore.ath.cx/weblog/archives/a … 05-m08.php
I still have the hoppy horse that I received as a present my first Christmas.
http://www.connellsville.com/discuss/se … &ds=&ord=0
The only scene I had trouble with was when the cop was chasing the hoppy horse around the town otherwise it is a flawless movie.
http://artisticthoughts.blogspot.com/20 … r-man.html
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Just for yucks, I checked to see if anyone had ever morphed “cubby hole” into “cuppy hole” (i.e., a place to put one’s drinking cup while driving). I got a mere 10 ghits. Hardly enough to qualify as an eggcorn, but amusing nonetheless…
Subtle interior touches – MG-Rover.org Forumslooking good (apart from dash) love steering wheel, whats the box in cuppy hole , the chrome mg one on one of the photos? ...
www.75andztclub.com/showthread.php?t=180727 – 105k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
Chew on this! [Archive] – FinHeaven & Co ForumsAny time he moved we sent bombs and he went back into his cuppy hole..notice that they didn’t have much of a army to defend themselves..or was that fact …
www.finheaven.com/boardvb2/archive/inde … 41990.html – 44k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
www.myspace.com/handychain… (FO) he is fine still as flacid and unfilled as ever but christmas has treated him well and he is safe tucked up in his little cuppy hole in my bumbag. ...
profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=19562926 – 126k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
some questions to all clk owners [Archive] – MBWorld.org ForumsI don’t have a nav but my Garmin 76s fits right into the cuppy hole on the navless cars. It won’t give directions to an address but does a lot of other …
forums.mbworld.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-83662.html – 8k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
350Z-TECH FORUMS > VMS Car PCAs for the Z, we moulded the monitor into the cuppy hole and also the monitor buttons into … yes… the cuppy hole can still be closed without a problem! ...
www.350z-tech.com/forums/lofiversion/in … 24015.html – 15k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
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‘cubby hole’ turns into ‘clubby hole’ 190 times!
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I’m surprised at both of the cubby hole results. “Cuppy hole” works so well as an eggcorn (especially if people are using it to refer to that little cup-shaped hole between the two front seats of a car) that I’d expect it to get more than 10 hits. And “clubby hole” is a bit harder to justify—but there it is, getting nearly 20 times as many hits. The best explanation I can come up with is that voiced consonants (like b’s) and unvoiced consonants (like p’s) don’t seem to swap places much.
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This has to be one of my favourites, it’s so simple, obvious (now you’ve spotted it) and the first citation justifies it completely. I’m not too surprised at the ‘cuppy hole’ but I am completely perplexed by the ‘clubby’ variant – I’ve just googled ‘clubby hole’ and got only 15 citations. This seems more in line with the odd typo, with Ken’s 190 hits suggesting that googlecounts are becoming even more wayward than usual.
I’m not sure you’re right about pees and bees either – a recent reject of mine was ‘rapid dog’ (621 ghits) for ‘rabid dog’, and how about ‘pubonic plague’ at 482 hits?
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I too kinda like the simplicity of hoppy horse. I certainly hopped.
I’ve occasionally had trouble reproducing other people’s google results recently as well. Oddly enough, I just googled “clubby hole” and reproduced Ken’s results. Actually, I got 191 hits—I presume that added “1” is from us. Here’s the URL:
So then I googled Jorkel’s “cuppy hole,” and got 43 raw hits, 28 of which look to be unique:
I just don’t know what’s going on with this kind of thing.
As for p’s and b’s—Jorkel has also challenged my comments on the voiced/devoiced divide before, so I guess I’m not convincing anyone. I’m obviously not claiming the substitution doesn’t happen—my own “hoppy horse,” the starting-point for this thread, is of course an example. (This kind of thing seems most common when the consonant occurs in an intervocalic position.) And there are a few others in the Database—“blown to pits,” “seize the day,” “rabid fan,” etc. But from what I’ve noticed, this sort of substitution is markedly less frequent than, say, the substitution of unvoiced plosives like p, t, and k for each other. Ken Lakritz has virtually made a career of chronicling the interchangeability of these last three. But he rarely gives us examples where b, d, or g substitute for their unvoiced counterparts. Maybe he and I are assuming we won’t find them, and therefore not looking for them diligently. But maybe we’re just not coming up with many examples when we do look.
It’d be interesting to sit down and do a thorough check of the Database, and maybe of a spotcheck of the Contribute page. I think there are more examples like buttkiss/bupkis, dander/gander, depth/death, figment/pigment, squid/squib, tong/thong, than examples like rabid/rapid, and vast/fast. I’m not willing to do the work right now to be sure. And even if my impression is correct, it’s possible that the pattern is a statistical accident. But I’m not convinced.
If people feel challenged to find lots of new eggcorns where c/k substitutes for g, p for b, s for z, dg for ch, sh for zh, etc. in order to provide counterevidence to my claim, well, great! (D><T is only interesting in cases where it seems reasonable that the writer’s dialect isn’t turning T into D.)
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I realize I’m reviving a discussion that’s two years old, but I’m curious about the so-called voiced~voiceless alternation in forming eggcorns or other variant pronunciations. The examples mentioned, “rapid” for “rabid,” “pubonic” for “bubonic,” etc. go beyond simply intervocalic position. It’s more like initial in an unstressed syllable. The contrast in English isn’t one of voicing anyway, but one of articulatory strength, fortis vs. lenis. Fortis consonants are most like lenes intially in unstressed syllables, where they are not aspirated (initial in stressed syllables) or glottalized (syllable final). The initial bilabial stops in “pubonic” and “bubonic” differ only in articulatory strength. The /p/ closes longer, has greater muscular tension, and has a longer contact area than the corresponding /b/. Initially, both are voiceless. /b/ gets voiced medially between voiced segments, and /p/ doesn’t.
I suspect there is a matter of emphasis involved in the substitution. I’ve heard people say “metal” for “medal” when they’re being emphatic, with the /t/ not reduced to a tap, or “petal” for “pedal.” So why not with labials or velars?
Herb
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This layman is obviously way behind the times—voicing isn’t considered a part of contrast in English? There are certainly references to it all over the place—do linguists use references to “voicing” as a non-technical shorthand for the lenis/fortis contrast in English?
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