Eggcorn Forum

The phrase “snug as a bug in a rug” sounds hip, as though it might have been coined in the 1920s. It is, however, quite an old idiom. The OED has a 1769 citation for it.

We tend to hear in the phrase a meaning for “snug” that suggests the bugs are comfortable and cozy in the rug, but the phrase may rely on another, now almost obsolete sense of the word “snug.” “To lie snug” means to keep oneself secret and concealed. Certain species of moths can make themselves marvelously flat. Rolled up rugs are popular hiding places for these moths (The adult moths don’t harm cloth, but their larvae can be quite destructive-which is what smelly “moth balls” are all about.). The moths “lie snug” (i.e., concealed) until someone unrolls the rug and is suddenly enveloped in a cloud of startled moths.

A few current speakers of English (several dozen ughits) seem to think that the idiom is “smug as a bug in a rug.” The substitution is semantically plausible. To be snug is to be in a state of ease or comfort. To be smug is to be satisfied with oneself. The meanings of the two words have some overlap.

Examples of the substitution:

Bulletin board posting: “And I got some regular weekly Tarot teaching, so all in all I’m smug as a bug in a rug at the moment.” (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/23504)

Comment on a blog, referring to watching busy Christmas traffic: “[J]ust looking at it and feeling as smug as a bug in a rug.” (http://www.camberwellonline.co.uk/2007/ … christmas/)

Anime TV forum: “I suppose that perhaps I’m just hoping too much. Yuji sat there for over half the season smug as a bug in a rug being spoiled by two girls fighting over his attention while he took them for granted….” (http://boards.fansub.tv/?showtopic=4883&st=520)

In the first two of these examples “smug” occurs in a context in which “snug” would have been appropriate. Restoring “snug” to its proper place in these examples results in a meaningful sentence. Some of the “smug” colors may rub off on the new context, but the added colors are not essential to the way the phrase is used. Many of the examples on the web, however, are more like the third one. In the third example the person using the phrase “smug as a bug” appears to have abandoned the original idiom and replaced it with a new one that depends on senses of “smug” that do not overlap with “snug.” Restoring “snug” to the sentence leaves a (sometimes fatal) meaning gap.

In these two types of examples we may be looking at eggcorn stages. New eggcorns borrow from the alternate connotations of the substituted word to recast the imagery of a phrase. The third example above is more of a zombie eggcorn. It has died and come back as something that bears only a physical resemblance to the living eggcorn.