Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I’m not sure about this one. I don’t associate squirrels with abusive language or dishonest accusations. But when I was a teenager, “squirrely” had a number of uses. It could sometimes mean “erratic, jerky” – like the fast, unpredictable movements of the animals themselves. When applied to a person, this sense meant “nervous, twitchy.” But sometimes the meaning was extended in a fairly vague way, so that it seemed to mean a range of different things – like “sly,” “odd,” “untrustworthy.” It’s possible (though hardly obvious) that this sort of usage may be providing a stepping-stone to “squirrelous.” On the other hand, this may be a case where the similarity in sound is just overwhelming any real logic.
Hard to count since the punning uses far outnumber the authentic ones. FWIW, “squirrelous” gets 1040/116 r/uGh. There are other spellings I didn’t count. Examples:
because you know that that’s what they’re going to come after him with. they’re going to come after him with a dirty, squir squirrelous, whispering campaign, how he’s a muslim, he’s not like us, he’s strange, his middle name sounds like a dictator we oppose.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Bill_Mahe … _0305.html
One can easily go point by point, squirrelous accusation by squirrelous accusation by the Obama camp, and prove that it is none other than Obama, Michelle, David Axelrod—the Mike Nifong of the Democratic Party, Obama’s militant black supporters and even stupid white liberals who’ve race-baited and even gender baited Hillary.
http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:zV … d=31&gl=us
[It’s not often that you get to provide equal time to people on two sides of an issue who are both using the same reshaping…. The poster corrected this latter citation two days later.]
Carlos Mencia who’s made a very similar squirrelous comment about Vietnamese himself is another @sswipe who violates this etiquette.
http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiver … 90708.html
Join us in celebrating two years of the MOST squirrelous political cartoon on the net
http://blogs.salon.com/0002786/2005/08/01.html
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For me the phrase “squirrel your way out of (a situation/responsibility)” (possibly eggcorned off “squirm your way …” or blended from that and “wiggle your way…” ?) adds strongly to the linkage of squirreling with untrustworthiness (and uncontrollability).
The notions “erratic, jerky, nervous, twitchy†easily slop over into “irritatingâ€; perhaps squirrelous criticisms are those that irritate you greatly (because they are unfair, ridiculously untrue, or whatever).
“Chattering” is also a fairly salient characteristic of squirrels (for some reason: I don’t hear them chatter nearly as much as jays, etc., when I’m around them.) That also fits in with the contexts of “squirrelous accusations”. It is also tied in with the busy-ness of “squirreling food/nuts/stuff away”. A squirrelous campaign would probably involve quite a lot of busy chattering.
We tend to value —probably because it’s easy to recognize?— the case where an eggcorn has a single obvious connection to the overall meaning (e.g. the “egg” means the ovoid shape of the uncapped kernel of the acorn). But there may be other connections as well (e.g. the “egg” may be the source whence the new life/next generation springs.) When there come to be a number of connections, none of them strong or immediately obvious, we get this vague flavor of eggcorns. The recent discussion of what “hair” contributes to “hairwire”, and whether “haywall” is an eggcorn, comes to mind.
So yes, I think it’s a kind of eggcorn.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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