Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
In conversation the other day someone used “plug ugly” and someone else corrected them using “pug ugly.” I opted for the former, having encountered that one first but thought the pug variant a likely eggcorn, though I now find it has slightly more unique hits than the original. The ‘plug uglies’ were a mid -19th century street gang noted for casual violence in their native Baltimore and apparently named after the ‘plug’ hats they wore, whatever they are. ‘Pug’ however, with its overtones of pugilism and the bashed-in face of a bonsai bulldog, seems far more apt than ‘plug’ and it is easy to understand the reluctance of an eggcorner to cast aside a familiar term which makes sense, for an unfamiliar one which doesn’t.
Because some on this site will not entertain as an eggcorn anything that has ‘gone mainstream’ (I’ve never understood quite why this should be, but my powers of analysis are notoriously feeble and consequently some of my contributions often seem more flippant than I intend) I’ll use second generation examples like…
well calling me puck ugly is not the way to get me into bed mcginty!! 105 weeks ago. Mary Moloney well blue balls i am a sweet nice girl, ...
skin.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=907033069
and
If I ever did see him again, I’m hoping I’d be gorgeous and he’d see me, that way I can walk right up to him and punch him right in his punk ugly chinless …
https://journals.aol.com/cakemangler/CakemanglersBlog/ – 68k – Cached
as well as
I really, really hope you go with the first one, ‘cause if you have seen that episode, then you’ll also remember that she’s pluck ugly when she’s out of the …
www.fanfiction.net/topic/46268/6085507/1/
and
your not pretty but your not puke ugly either. ... okay and about your friend she is worse than puke ugly..im sorry im not trying to be rude but ew take her …
answers.yahoo.com/question/ index?qid=20071129144908AAayAQc&show=7 – 95k – Cached
With some of these variants the option of being a noun has withered away, but in terms of imagery ‘puke’ and ‘punk’ still work well, ‘pluck’ reminds me of giblets and even puck/Puck has roots in devils and evil spirits. Now I’m not suggesting this is a deliberate, conscious choice of imagery, I’m simply curious about what seems to have occurred and how and why it might have done so…
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For what it’s worth, the Oxford English Dictionary dates plug-ugly about a generation earlier than pug-ugly. (It doesn’t include any of Peter’s other colorful versions.)
The earliest reference to the street gang is from 1856*, and the earliest use of plug-ugly to mean a very ugly person is from 1862. The earliest use of pug-ugly, to describe hoboes, is in the Lima Daily News in March of 1911. Of course, as the back-daters at the American Dialect Society can attest, the OEDs earliest citations are often not the first usage on record, just the earliest one that the dictionary’s editors have found.
*Curiously, although the Plug Uglies were a Baltimore gang, the 1856 reference is from the Oroville, California Butte Rec. in a story about the gang’s attempts to foil voters in Philadelphia. The second reference, in the 1 June 1857 N.Y. Daily Times, describes the gang’s sojourn from Baltimore to Washington “for the purpose of defeating the Democratic ticket.”
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Plug/pug ugly must be the acorn for bug ugly.
The verdict is in: A white tent-and-glass structure at Georgia and Beatty that’s to be Canada’s $10.4-million showcase at the Winter Games is bug ugly.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news … 27d3668a69
Is football still considered a sport or is it just a bunch of overpaid, bug ugly men on a field with a strangely shaped ball of pigskin?
http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messa … 1063945802
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