Eggcorn Forum

I was just remembering yet another word that I mispronounced in my mind, and that is bedraggled. I pronounced it BED-raggled and believed it meant the tousled (ragged?) way a person looks after sleeping.

Then it occurred to me that we may be on to a subcategory of eggcorn, one not caused by mishearing but by misreading. At least some of the words people have listed carried a distinct imagery that the reader extrapolated from the mispronunication, such as “bed-raggled.”

Last edited by JonW719 (2008-08-14 16:57:56)

Well, what about things you misunderstood and mispronounced? I was reading the preface to The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton this morning, and was momentarily puzzled by a note on the dedication that appeared in an earlier version of the book: “These ghostly straphangers to Walter de la Mare.”

I thought, “What’s a ‘stra-fin-jur’? Must be Greek—the str of ‘astro,’ the ph of ‘pharmacy’....” Then finally the brain of this native Westerner inserted a hyphen between “strap” and “hanger.”

I’ve rarely seen the word “straphanger,” but in my few encounters I always thought it was a jocular name for commuters on the New York subway. But Wharton seems to be using it to refer to someone/-thing that rides on someone else’s coattails.

[Edit. The OED only has the commuter sense listed, but Wikipedia offers support for my reading of the Wharton. Under the “Other Definitions” section of the “Straphanger” article, Wikipedia says, “”Straphanger” is sometimes used to mean a person who benefits from the actions and exertions of someone else, with no efforts of their own; someone who is “just along for the ride”.” Hey, OED, time to revise this one.]

Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-08-16 00:31:02)

Thanks, David. With your cooper-ation, I recall a problem I once had with reen-forced pronunciation.

In the same vein: “potsherd.” Pots-heard? Pot-sured?

From today’s version of World Wide Words:

By the way, people sometimes think indices is an English plural and so make a singular noun indice from it (apice and vertice are also very occasionally seen). Examples of indice can be found going back a century or more, not always in uneducated writing. A note by Charles Doyle appeared in the Winter 1979 issue of American Speech: “At a recent academic gathering, a literary savant began his speech with a quotation that spoke of certain indices. Thereafter, at least a dozen times, the speaker referred to this or that indice (ending like jaundice).” It most recently appeared in the Washington Post on 22 August 2008: “Yet as an indice of some of the lines of attack that the McCain camp is employing it is of great interest.” Thus does language change …

Presumably these people pronounced the plural to rhyme with jaundices or premis(s)es or promises?

In any case, this is a backformation, but related to what we’ve been talking about. I can easily see people pronouncing it to rhyme with “dice” rather than “jaundice”. Or “ín-de-see”, in another back-formation.

I have recorded several people using “crisee” as the singular of “crises”.

I’m not sure the pronunciation “premisees” was ever standard for me, but I’m sure I have used it.

Times I’ve thought people were using a singular “parenthesis” meaning a set of parentheses, they may have been using a spelling pronunciation of “parentheses” itself, with schwa instead of ee for that last vowel.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-08-30 10:31:51)

When, as a child, my mother read the Bible verse that mentioned “divers” (diverse) places, she thought it was referring to underwater (places where divers dive to).

Dixon

I just thought of one more: Poignant. I alway thought it was similar to “pregnant” and so I pronounced it as “poig-nant.” ;-)

As a child I used to think MISLED was pronounced MYZE-ULD. I was about 18 before I learnt it was MISS-LED.

DavidTuggy wrote:

Yeah, that one’s a classic. (Though why you guys insist it is pronounced MIZZLE-D o MYZLE-D, I’ll never understand. The true mispronounciation is definitely MYSLE-D.)And welcome to the forum, Ed.

David: Thanks. But please tell me why you use “mispronounciation”? Is it dialect? I have only ever seen/heard this once before, and that was from a Londoner who also happened to be a TEFL teacher!

Ref: “Pronounce” is the verb, but the O is omitted for the noun: “pronunciation.” This mistake ranks right up there in incongruity with “writting.”
[[From http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/pronounciation.html]]

Regards, Ed.

Last edited by edcrater (2008-12-06 21:28:03)

Just ran across one of these from years ago. C.S. Lewis, in the preface to the Screwtape Letters , refers to

the soft, slim, girlish, and consolatory angels of nineteenth century art, shapes so feminine that they avoid being voluptuous only by their total insipidity—the frigid houris of a teatable paradise. They are a pernicious symbol. In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying ‘Fear not.’ The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say, ‘There, there’.

I remember various attempts (mostly tending to the salacious) on my part to figure out what in heaven a “teatable paradise” might be. It wasn’t till years later that it dawned on me that it might well be a tea-table paradise.

I’d never thought of the Elegy together with that passage, but, as you say, it certainly does have a lot of parallels. Lewis may well have had it in mind. (I agree, though, that he probably didn’t intend “teatable” to have salacious overtones.)
.
Speaking of that last line, a friend once related the effect on him of an eerie experience, saying “It made all the hair stand up on the back of my end.”

Speaking of that last line, a friend once related the effect on him of an eerie experience, saying “It made all the hair stand up on the back of my end.”

My wife and I have been catching up on some of the old Poirot videos. Peter Ustinov did six Poirot movies, I think, and David Suchet continues his almost twenty-year run on ITV and PBS as Agatha’s Belgian detective.

Each Poirot video production features at least one good idiom blend. Blends are Poirot’s verbal trademark. Perhaps we should call idiom blends “Poirots.”