Eggcorn Forum

The interviews on radio news broadcasts are good hunting grounds for idiom blends. After this one fell on my ears, I went looking online and found 49 unique hits for “fall/falls/falling/fell on flat ears.” It would appear to be a conflation of “fall on deaf ears” and “fall flat” – two expressions that can mean very similar things. I wondered whether some writers might be thinking eggcornishly about the way some animals put their ears back in fear, anger or surprise, but that doesn’t seem quite relevant in this context. The first citation below is in honor of Kem’s recent “fail by the wayside” post. Examples:

Just like the words that were depicted by the seed that fell along the path, where the birds ate it, the speakers words fell on flat ears, where they were heard but not really heard.
http://www.saintmellitushanwell.org.uk/ … w%2013.htm

I myself own a copy of Heidegger’s works and can see that its metaphysical language will fall on flat ears in the current mode of quasi-scientific, diagrammatic and programmatic methodologies despite its relevance (in my mind at least)
http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads. … 2_0_22_0_C

Her frenzied cry for justice, however, fell on flat ears.
http://books.google.com/books?id=g6Z5kJ … &ct=result

I don’t know whether it is because of the war or because of President Bush’s unpopularity but the New York bit fell on flat ears.
http://www.sfdsnyc.org/Old%20Priest’s%2 … 0diary.htm

Personally I don’t buy the ethical arguments against it and I’m sure my moral arguments for legalisation will probably fall on flat ears so nevermind this set of arguments.
http://noself.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_archive.html

Marcus believes that Pearce should be able to let go of the patients he has lost, in particular a girl called Rose, but his remonstrations fall on flat ears when a double casarean leaves him with a healthy boy, and Pearce with a stillborn child.
http://www.dotlit.qut.edu.au/200102/gifts.html
[poetry – so these flat ears may be intentional, though that’s not clear]

I’m currently finishing up a batch of posts that were started before or during the weeks in which my computer was refusing to go on the Internet, so it’s just a neat coincidence that this post seems to be a nice pairing with today’s other “thin-themed” idiom blend posted by David T.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-07-29 00:12:50)