Eggcorn Forum

The reason I don’t normally contribute to “best of’s” is that 20 minutes later I find I’ve neglected some gems then have to start sacrificing all over again. I selected the following 20 before Kem’s appeared and this time I refuse to change them no matter what pearls I may have missed:

Add lips/ad libs
Aghasp/aghast
Backclog/backlog
Bloodgeon/bludgeon
Breath-stroke/breast-stroke
Crock/cock and bull story
Day view/debut
Garbledegook/gobbledegook
Hatch/hedge your bets
Ifso factso/ipso facto
Incandlescent/incandescent
Incinderate/incinerate
Lamest/layman’s terms
Lime life/limelight
Ontrays/entrees
Pig style/pig stye
Shy grin/chagrin
Skimp milk/skimmed milk
Snail space/snail’s pace
Suckubus/succubus

Next year I’m not going to bother with the comments – man, that took a long time. In any case, here’s my top 21. I left out anything I posted, and I also didn’t consider anything that had already gotten recognition in the Database – which meant that something like Jorkel’s excellent “tatter medallion” isn’t here. [Chris has added “ontray” to the Database since I wrote this up, but I decided just to keep it and add another.] Seeing Kem’s amazing, painstaking list of the top 150 might have changed some of my choices, but like Peter and Pontius Pilate both, I’ve decided I’ve written what I’ve written. This isn’t in a strict order, but a number of my faves cluster at the head of the list.

“dayview” for “debut” (kohath)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3173

I love “double-yolked” eggcorns like “dayview” – in which all the parts of the original are reshaped even while the resulting whole makes sense in context. This one also reminds me of “eggcorn” itself in that it feels like it could have been a perfectly standard term in some alternate history of the English lexicon. Kohath earns extra points for digging up a thread in which a user defends “dayview” and attributes its origins to sports lingo. This instantly became one of my all-time faves.

“untilmatum” for “ultimatum” (David Vinson via Kem)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2755

Metathetical eggcorns – in which letters of the acorn are switched around – aren’t all that common, so “untilmatum” is pretty damn cool. And it works so well since a phrase like “You’ve got until [an all-too-quickly-approaching date]!” is a virtually archetypal aspect of movie ultimatums.

“revisitism” for “recidivism” (Ken Lakritz)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2793

“Revisitism” is almost a phonological anagram of the original, with the v, s/c, and t/d all finding new places in this eggcornical equivalent of musical chairs. And it works semantically, too. The usual habitat of “recidivism” is officialese, and this reshaping seems unintentionally to mock the euphemistic tendencies in that discouse – as if going back to the pen for ten years for the same crime were just another “visit.”

“ontrays” for “entrees” (David Tuggy)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3449

This shares the 2008 “Right Under Our Noses Award” with “clusterphobic” – I’m amazed no one had posted it earlier. Restaurants will often bring out salads or starters in separate bowls or plates, but big, hearty entrees come out on trays.

“shy grin” for “chagrin” (Kem)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3335

Probably our cutest, cuddliest contribution this year. The very best eggcorns often seem to reveal subtle nuances of a concept, and “shygrin” is about as good an example of that phenomenon as I can think of. The feeling of chagrin is often inflected with the bashful embarrassment this reshaping seems to communicate. A truly classic eggcorn.

“wind mirror” for “wing mirror” (Peter Forster)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2607

In the comments, Billyphuz said, “I buy the image of wind buffeting the mirrors.” I do, too.

“ifso facto” for “ipso facto” (robbiedougs)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2718

Jorkel provided a nice reading in the thread: “In one interpretation, it has an hilarious tautology to it: ‘If it is so, then it is fact” ... Ifso facto!’” But I don’t want to underestimate the eggcorners; people may also be thinking something like “X may happen, and if so, Y will follow.” That’s a fairly decent echo of the original’s concern with cause/effect and consequences.

“clusterphobic” for “claustrophobic” (mander)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3020

This works better if you’re envisioning a crowded room rather than a narrow space, but in the former case it’s an extremely appropriate substitution. It’s impressive numberwise, too, with at the least many hundreds of unique hits.

“rage war” for “wage war” (David Tuggy)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3332

As Jorkel pointed out in the comments, “wage war” has spawned an impressive array of reshapings. I think this may be the best of the lot for two reasons. First of all, it works really well semantically – a sense of rage or outrage often provides the first impetus for war. And I like the way that this transitive reshaping seems to be supported by its intransitive counterpart in “the war rages (on).”

“tendernitis” for “tendonitis” (Craig C. Clarke)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2438

I’ve had tendonitis of the elbow (apparently as a result of correcting student essays, rather than playing golf or tennis), and extreme tenderness is in fact what I most associate with the condition. As Kem pointed out in the comments, there’s also an even more strongly reshaped variant in “tenderitis.”

“brain hammerage” for “brain hemorrhage” (burred)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3462

My usual rule of thumb is that if the condition can easily kill you, its spelling is probably funny and Greek. Fortunately, the people who created this one weren’t aware of that. This snuck in a few days before the end of the year – a great way of finishing things off (sort of speak…).

“sort of speak” for “so to speak” (Dixon Wragg)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2794

This is cool for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s a pretty radical reshaping of the original. “Of” and “to” are both reduced to a schwa in quick speech, and the eggcorners have reconstituted the source of that vowel in a non-standard way. And they’ve also reanalyzed the word boundaries, moving the t of “to” to the end of “sort.” But despite the drastic reshaping, this still neatly calls up the sense of approximation or roundaboutness implicit in the original. The result may feel a bit clumsy, but I like it.

“patternation” for “patination” (Peter Forster)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2671

Peter defines “patination” as “the venerable bloom of age on bronze sculptures, coins and latterly anything old or valuable.” “Patternation” works so well that both Peter and I double-checked to be sure that it wasn’t a specialist’s technical term.

“selfforefilling” for “self-fulfilling” (majolo)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2852

A number of people point out in the rich, long thread that accompanied this that the “fore-“ prefix here seems to point ahead to the word “prophecy,” which so often follows the acorn. A nice illustration of the way in which eggcorns occasionally reemphasize some aspect of the acorn.

“cow down to” for “kowtow to” (paulb)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3108

As people noted in the lengthy comments, “cow down to” seems to work on many levels: it evokes being cowed, cowering, the submissiveness of cows, and the rhyming phrase “bow down to.” And it’s a double-yolker, to boot – both parts of the original are meaningfully refashioned.

“free willing for “free-wheeling” (Ken Lakritz)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2438

Situations that are freewheeling are often ones in which constraints on the will of the participants have been relaxed. This one seems to have flown in under the radar – I’d completely forgotten about it, and it didn’t elicit much comment – but I think it comes close to scoring a direct hit, meaning-wise.

“penny up” for “pony up” (A Kem/Wade collaboration via Kem)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2863

A classic example of an opaque idiom being made much more transparent and immediate in its eggcorn. An added bonus with this was the hilarious illustrative excerpt from Kem’s unyet-published neo-noir novel.

“pains and needles” for “pins and needles” (Peter Forster)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2008

At first I didn’t like this one so well because I felt that “pains” pointlessly disrupted the neat imagistic parallelism in “pins and needles.” Then it occurred to me that what’s lost in near-synonymy seems to be gained in a cause-and-effect pairing, with the pains perhaps thought of as the result of being on needles. Sure, that’d work even better if the traditional order were reversed, but hey….

“petty Annie/penny Annie” for “penny ante” (David Tuggy/Kem)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3448

This is probably the choice that people will disagree with most strongly; Kem’s already on record as questioning its eggcornicity, but I think it works. Ironically, it was Kem who found the “Penny Annie” variant, which I think may be even better than David T’s version; I’ve saddled him with a co-credit as a result.

“pestimist” for “pessimist” (Kem)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2919

Speaks for itself, I think. Lots of people consider us pests.

“direbolical” for “diabolical” (Peter Forster)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3353

Probably works best in the non-rhotic speech of Peter’s compatriots, but it nicely evokes the usual consequences of diabolical plots.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-01-06 00:54:03)

I liked “wheeled power,” but maybe that was 2007? I’m too tired to search.

Excellent lists. I second and third the love expressed for “untilmatum”, “backclog”, “ifso facto”, “skimp milk” (my candidate for the “Under our Noses” award) and “sort of speak”. Though I also agree that it is very hard to pick.
.
One I don’t think has been mentioned, that I thought rather wonderful, was “lipness test”.
.
And … And …

I must agree that Pat’s analytic post was simply an awesome read. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and wish he might have included some of his own.

Off the top of my head, I really liked ifso facto the best in 2008, but I need to go back and compare it with the others.