Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Seen on a webpage written by someone who takes great pride in correct English:
I am updating and revising the articles as they make the journey, which is why progress might be described as “Stately” rather than lightening fast!
So, I guess if the progress wasn’t “Stately” either his workload would be getting lighter, or soon the page woud fade out altogether!
And here is a scanner I don’t think I’d buy: http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news.php?newsId=43
Last edited by jgarry (2006-02-21 08:49:46)
I know! Let’s decrement usenet newsgroups in favor of disconnected blogs!
Offline
Yep, this one is still alive and well.
“lightening bolt” – 111,000 ghits
“lightening fast” – 244,000 ghits
“lightening storm” – 42,000 ghits
The false etymology is natural: electric bolts light up the sky, don’t they? So it’s obviously a “lightening” bolt.
Offline
“Lightening” and “lightning” are really the same word, a word with several meanings and several spellings. The correlation between certain meanings and certain spellings happened late—the attachment of the bolt to the spelling “lightning” seems to have solidified in the nineteenth century.
My guess would be that the vast majority of the “lightening” spellings that refer to lightning are simple spelling errors. To think of the switch as an eggcorn we would need to find some hint that the person was importing into the error some image of “lightening” that either (1) was not assimilated into the the imagery behind “lightning” at the time of the spelling bifurcation or (2) was attached to “lightening” after the “lightning” spelling and sense split from the mainline tradition.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
There has been some discussion about Everything here.
Combining Locate32 and Everything would be interesting, e.g. using Everythings engine in Locate32 or migrate some features in GUI to Everyting. But the problem is Everything is not open source, so I can’t do anything until there it’s released open source or there is an API which can be used.
Offline
I suppose there’s a distinction to be made between lightning consisting of light and it’s tendency to light up (or lighten up?) the sky. I don’t know where this sets with the etymology, and I don’t know how the utterers perceive lightning. Perhaps this might fall into my category of stealth eggcorns in which individuals perceive the same word in two different ways.
Offline