Eggcorn Forum

I’ve never read it as “here, here!”

Until now.

But it’s a reasonable sort of eggcorn.

Nowadays, we use “Word!” (hear the word)

There’s an interesting and entertaining treatment of this at https://grammarist.com/spelling/hear-hear/ . Among the nuggets:

[from the Grammarist:] Here, here is widely regarded as a misspelling, […] hear, hear is the original form […] “Here, here” is still common in the English language. It’s more commonly used at the moment. But it could be for a different circumstance or context. When someone’s looking for their keys, and you found them, you can say, “here, here!”

The rest of the quotes are from the comments. The order of them is shifted around a bit.

always assumed it came down from old English, Hear ye, hear ye… Which was simply a command to listen well…

That’s funny, because I’m sure I read somewhere that “Here, here!” was the proper spelling, being originally a shout meaning, “Here is the person to whom we should all be paying attention.” (Picture the shouter gesturing toward the speaker with his open hand.) I guess I’m easily duped, because this didn’t sound nonsensical or silly to me.

It’s “Here.” A speaker would say, “Here, Here” to indicate approval–”Here–I agree too. Right here!” The word “Hear” makes no sense.

Funny, because I generally say (and assumed logically) that it was “Hear here”, as in “Hey, listen to this guy over here”. I’ll just keep doing it my way, it makes the most sense to me.

Why not “HEAR HERE” meaning listen here (you heard it here or come gather round and hear here

[agreeing it should be “hear here”:] it still makes more sense to my logic. ¶ As in, “Everyone, HEAR what has been said HERE!” ¶ I still check it now and again just to see if it has changed. ¶ Alas, we’re outnumbered. ¶ Unfortunately for us, grammar yields to consensus over logic.

(That last is a profound, though not entirely true, observation. If it were absolutely true, the proper form would now unquestionably be “Here, here”. I’m happy to keep trying to change, or at least resist, that consensus. As a previous commenter said: “I’ll just keep doing it my way, it makes the most sense to me.”)

I hear it as a shortening of a toast, as at a dinner party. “Here’s a toast to what was just said!]”, repeated for emphasis. “Here, here!” Everyone who agrees raises a toast. Everyone drinks.

I always imagined that original form was ‘here’, indicating that here was a person who agrees with the speaker, like a roll-call or show of hands. The more ‘here’s’ you heard from the audience, the more support was present in the room, which is, after all, the way its actually used. From that, one can easily see how it would have become ‘here here’ for strong agreement, giving the impression that more people are in support.

Amens from the quire.

I’ve seen “here, here” in the context of a rebuke, as in, “Here, here, sir, you’ve no cause to say a thing like that!” Since the speaker disagrees with the person, she would not call for him to be heard, but would be saying, in effect, “Look here, mister…”

As Pat quoted from OED, above: “It […] expresses, according to intonation, admiration, acquiescence, indignation, derision, etc.”

There, there….it is neither here nor there.

Here and now, several herers, or hear herers, have suggested as the meaning. Interesting that “Now, now” has the same pacifying tone as “There, there.” Why don’t we say, “Then, then”?

[from a user handled Parody Parody:] You’re all wrong. That is only because the sounding of the phrase has been morphed over the years. Look back into it and you’ll find that the original phrase is “hare hair”, which, when dissected, makes much more sense than any other explanation, since the phrase is used to imply strong agreement with what has just been said. It is a shortened version of the then common phrase “I agree with what you said so completely, any difference in our arguments could not be measured by the width of a HARE’s HAIR!” ¶ I am flabbergasted by the fact that nobody else has been able to identify this historic origination.

Eggcornish reasoning laid out for our delectation. I love it. As another commenter says:

The real education about “Hear, hear vs. here, here” is now presented in the comment section. “Hear, hear”? “Here, here”? “Hear, here”? “Here, hear”? They all seem right when a logical context is presented.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2022-03-21 18:23:20)