Eggcorn Forum

Yes, you’re right—I’d forgotten that we’d improved on Zwicky’s original definition of “flounder.”

Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-12-31 01:26:32)

“Flounder” is Arnold Zwicky’s term for a kind of reshaping in which the substituted word is a single word, already in the lexicon, that has a significant semantic overlap with the original (i.e., the “acorn”). “To flounder” for “to founder” is the “eponym” here. For him, flounders aren’t eggcorns. Zwicky tries to make things clear at the end of his original Language Log discussion when he writes

Flounders and pineapples as a set (FLOUNDAPPLES?) are distinguished from pails and eggcorns as a set (PAILCORNS?) in that the former involve confusions of wholes, while the latter involve confusions of parts of (at least partially) fixed expressions.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language … 04805.html

In this last statement, Zwicky would at first seem to be saying that if a substitution happens only (or perhaps largely) in fixed expressions, then it isn’t a flounder. The problem is that it’s unclear what he means by “fixed expressions.” His chief illustrative example is “advent” in “in the advent of fire,” and he argues that “advent” is not an eggcorn but a “flounder,” an already-extant word with a meaning close to that of “event.” But “in the event of fire/flood/earthquake” etc. looks to me like a fairly exemplary instance of what I’d call a “fixed phrase.” And if by “fixed expression” Zwicky means a “fixed phrase,” then “advent of fire” shouldn’t be a flounder by Zwicky’s own criteria.

This puzzled me when the LL post first appeared: either Zwicky just didn’t realize that “in the event of x” could be seen as a fixed expression—which seems unlikely given his areas of expertise and the fact that he refined his argument during an exchange with Michael Quinion—or he meant more simply single words that are already standard (and his other examples are “flaunt/flout,” “militate/mitigate,” etc). I assumed the latter, and for a long time I didn’t find the flounder category of much use as a result.

During last summer’s exchanges on eggcornological theory, however, “flounder” was held up as useful if we refine the definition to indicate explicitly a broad-based, across-the-board substitution that happens not just in fixed phrases but more or less everywhere that the original word appears. That’s a more useful definition for our purposes because it wouldn’t challenge the status of many things already in the Database. On the other hand, it would seem to rule out Zwicky’s main example of “in the advent of fire” because the event/advent substitution seems much less likely when you’re talking cases like “We’re having a small advent at our place tonight,” or “WWII was a momentous advent.” In any case, the term “flounder” seems more appealing and useful than a number of AZ’s other terminological innovations.

Kem also challenged the contention of Zwicky and David Tuggy that flounders aren’t eggcorns; he considers them a special subset and calls them “flounder eggcorns.” I like that because it keeps me from really having to make up my mind on the issue, but the only flounder that seems clearly eggcornish to me is “aisle/isle,” which I’ve argued is a special, weird case.

As for “advent” in “in the advent of fire,” I think I agree with Quinion that it’s probably an eggcorn; the only real obstacle might come from the etymological rule, and that doesn’t bother me as much in this case.

Hey, Peter, if you’ve actually read this far, I’ve probably given you a head-start on that post-New Year’s headache—at least if your mulling includes much mulling of wine. Happy New Year!

Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-12-31 20:23:06)