Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Shirts and coats with raglan sleeves have a continuous piece of fabric that forms the sleeve and extends all the way to the garment neck. Raglan sleeves are common in modern sportswear and t-shirts. The term “raglan” is apparently derived from Baron Raglan, a famous field marshal in early 1800s Britain. Raglan lost an arm at the Battle of Waterloo. He may never have worn garments with raglan sleeves, but his name became associated with one-armedness, and since raglan sleeves, lacking a shoulder seam, can sometimes give the impression that there is no arm attached to the shoulder, the name of the one-armed Baron was duly borrowed to describe the garment style.
The Baron Raglan connection to the garment style, however, is lost on most modern speakers. Since “raglan” is an unfamiliar word, people often say garments with this sleeve style have “ragland sleeves.” Some samples from the net:
A sewer’s blog: “I chose to knit the body and sleeves in the round up to the armholes and then place everything onto a cable and work around shaping the ragland sleeves and it worked really well.” (http://quicklyunravel.blogspot.com/2007 … plete.html)
Someone who actually knows the derivation of the word and still spells it wrong: ” Ragland sleeves are named for the Earl of Raglan, Fitzroy James Henry Somerset who issued the misunderstood plan of attack that led to the disastrous charge. ” (http://www.dsimmons.org/Clothes/Sweaters.htm)
An expert’s answer on AllExperts: “Hey, Janice! The ragland sleeves require you to increase the number of stitches in every other row, so perhaps that’s why there are ‘too many stitches.’” (http://en.allexperts.com/q/Crochet-3235 … ions-1.htm)
Over 150 unique ghits for “ragland sleeve” on the net. Presumably these people focus on the “rag” part of “raglan,” associating it with garment cloth. Does the loose and sloppy shape of a raglan jacket makes them think the garment might have been made out of rags, might have come from “rag-land?”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Kem, I found this variant in which ‘raglan’ seems to have become a verb. I don’t imagine Lord Raglan ever really raggled, but it’s an interesting thought.
She taught me to sew a dirndl skirt and to sew raggling sleeves. She taught me to set a proper table and which fork to use. She taught me proper etiquette, ...
www.deltakappagamma-epsilon.org/Slate%20Memorial.htm – 11k – Cached
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“Raggling” appears to be a mishearing of “raglan” or “ragland” rather than an eggcornish interpretation. Perhaps I’m missing something,but I don’t see any imagery transfer between “raggle” and the raglan garment style. (Had to look up raggle-not a common word, is it?)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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No, but it’s the sort of word you almost feel like you know already. Combine the idea of frayed, worn cloth from rag with the repetitive/many-small-actions/moving.pieces “feel” of Vggle (struggle/snuggle/snaggle-toothed/haggle/wriggle/wrangle/mangle/ and lots of others, I’m, sure), and raggling makes sense. And raglan sleeves, with diagonal seams in the knitting, tend to be a bit irregular (raggled?) if you look at them closely.
Btw -ing isn’t always a verbal suffix, though it regularly makes an adjective of some sort. Conceivably it would be taken as being on a noun “a raggle” rather than a verb “to raggle”.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-06-28 17:45:24)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Well, “raggle-taggle” in its “raggedy, unkempt” meaning might be relevant. Or not.
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I was surprised when I googled “raggling.” In addition to the standard meaning (notching walls to receive wiring or flashing), I found uses of the word that I don’t believe are represented in dictionaries (yet). I could only guess at some of the meanings. So it is possible that there is a meaning with the right imagery to make it an eggcorn. As David points out, the word has all the right credentials for new coinings.
At any given time there always seem to be one or two honey words that are attracting the bears of meaning. It’s a raggling mess we’re in.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Both raggling and ragland could, for certain speakers, be pronounced the same as Raglan. I agree that raggling looks like a gerund/participle form of a verb, but it doesn’t suggest any obvious meaning to me. That would make it non-eggcornish in my book.
Ragland, on the other hand, seems to suggest a place name, similar to Auckland or Queensland. A ragland sleeve might, in turn, be seen as parallel to apparel named for places, such as Orkney sweater or cashmere (indirectly from Kashmir).
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Also relevant here is bed-raggled , confessed to by JonW in the “Things you read and understood but mispronounced in your mind†thread.
(http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2179)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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