Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
The reappearance of ‘comuffins’ reminded me of this variant of cojones. Since I first spotted it the count has dropped from 12 to just 1. Where do the missing ones go, I wonder?
At least you had the ‘cohornies’ to come out and ask, I waited too long and lost the girl I liked to someone else. Good luck. ...
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Possibly the other 11 were URL reflections of a single page that was taken down.
“Cojones” is a peculiar word. Have you noticed how often it is spelled (and pronounced) “cajones?” According to the Google search hit estimations, “cajones” occurs at half the frequency of the correctly spelled “cojones.” In addition, there is a tendency to spell the words “co/ajonies,” as though the singular was “co/ajony” instead of “co/aJon.”
The ”-ies” error is arguably due to a confusion between the way suffix plurals are formed in Spanish and in English. I’m blank about what might cause the internal o/a switch.
(Thanks, Pat, spelling corrected. I did my searches with the correct spelling, but got confused when writing the post.)
Last edited by kem (2008-11-14 18:27:24)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Kem’s evidence of an a/o switch in the spelling is pretty interesting, and I think it’s perhaps a sign that the word is “going native” for many speakers. English has a tendency to turn many unstressed vowels into the schwa sound (sorta like “uh”). This happens less often—and more slowly—in words that still feel “foreign” to lots of speakers. But “a” is a pretty common default spelling for the schwa sound when people are unsure/unaware of the conventional spelling, so I think it’s likely some people are saying “cuh-ho-neez.”
I’d say the correct spelling is Peter’s “cojones.”
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There actually is a word “cajón” (pl. cajones) in Spanish, much more common (partly because less offensive) than “cojón(es)” in polite speech at least. But it means ‘box’ or ‘crate’, and having the crates to do something doesn’t match up very well with having the balls to do it. Of course such mixups by non-speakers are not very surprising.
The fact that in English we reduce pre-stress vowels to schwa means the pronunciation difference between cohones and cahones is minimal.
A non-silent final -e tends to be pronounced -ee (as in “simile” for instance), so the spelling -ie makes sense as a reasonable representation of the pronunciation.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I quite like ‘cohornies’ as an eggcorn. The connection between horny in the sense of “sexually excited” or “over-sexed” has some connection to cojones “testicles.” Perhaps the co- is understood as “small parts” (or maybe “with”?); thus the “small parts involved in horniness” would be testicles.
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“Cojornies” would be a great eggcorn, but, as Peter started this thread pointing out, one web example does not an eggcorn make. Let me try some other permutations…
I found a few more examples using “cojornes.” See http://www.google.ca/search?q=cojornes A couple of the pages are Spanish, though. What would “jornes” (“hornies”) convey in Spanish?
“Cohornes” (http://www.google.ca/search?q=cohornes) yields about 50 ughits. The examples are hard to extract-too many languages, languages whose speakers may or may not know “horny.” Still, I think I see a few more English instances of the reputed eggcorn.
But would even ten examples be enough when we are dealing with a word whose spelling is so variable?
Last edited by kem (2008-11-14 19:08:55)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Well, and a word which could so easily be a product of somebody trying to be funny or cute. There are a huge number of word twistings to get them to convey a sexual double-entendre, and many seem to be independently invented.
(fwiw, I know no meaning for “jornes†in Spanish. -orn is impossible as a word-ending combination, and -orne pretty rare.)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Yeah, I was thinking the same as David T. I worry about the quotation marks around “cohornies”—could just show that the speaker knew he was using slang or a “foreign” word, but they could also mark a pun.
Hey look—8 posts! The author of “cohornies” should be very proud….
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