Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Not an eggcorn, but I like it. I imagine a Birnam Wood composed of nothing but foot-high Chinese elms. There appear to be a few dozen of these out there. Examples:
“One night, near Airfield 2, the Japanese came out and made a bonsai attack on the guys there, who were in their tents.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/warstor … ory?page=2
One bonsai attack comes to mind, in early June 1945 on a rainy day a large size of enemy charged against our position.
http://www.empiremediallc.com/ARTICLE%20Leo%20Giron.htm
Perhaps even worse than his poor work rate, though, is the manner in which Huck goes on attack offensively, which usually consists of him charging at his opponent, flailing his arms in a wild bonsai attack hoping to connect with something meaningful.
http://www.boxingnews24.com/2008/04/huc … -Saturday/
This has also made it into print – books.google.com lists about 10 instances, mostly in memoirs about WWII.
[Edit: My memory mangled the prophecy in Macbeth 4.1 pretty badly—I originally wrote “Dunsinane Forest” for “Birnam Wood,” but a lingering sense of wrongness sent me hunting for my Shakespeare. FWIW, the Third Apparition in the play makes this prediction about the title character: “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until / Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill/ Shall come against him” (4.1.108-10).]
Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-11-19 00:18:41)
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Bonzer.
*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 also confess to the occasional mangling of the Bard’s words. In North America we don’t always get our Shakespeare first-hand, and the lack of exposure shows up in funny places.
There is a humorous story about this at the beginning of Isaac Asimov’s book on Shakespeare. A woman confesses to Asimov that she finds Shakespeare disagreeable. Asimov questions her and finds that she has read or watched almost nothing actually written by Shakespeare, so he sends her away with a reading assignment-Hamlet or Macbeth, as I recall. She returns to him and says “I read it, and I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s just a bunch of quotations strung together.”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Gentlemen, the enemy is more ruthless than we feared. They’ve unleashed the tiny trees. God have mercy on our souls.
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