Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
The word “lucre” comes to us from L. lucrum, which was “material gain or profit”, but also “avarice”. The noun is rarely used these days outside of the pejorative or facetious filthy lucre. The adjective lucrative is a common word for “profitable”.
Filthy lucre has an illustrious history, as one of the many words and phrases that the Biblical scholar William Tyndale (link) introduced into the language. For his pains in providing a ground-breaking 16th century translation of the Bible into the vernacular, directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, which was spread widely via the newfangled medium of print, he was strangled and then burned at the stake. His translated Bible formed the basis of the King James version 70 years later. At least one of Tyndale’s phrases is the basis of a post on this forum: give up the ghost which is in the Database as “give up the goat” (link).
Filthy lucre shows up on the web in two interesting forms. First, there is filthy looker which I’m sneaking into this forum although it’s a mere mondegreen:
Well, baby, what I couldn’t do
With plenty of money and you.
In spite of the worry that money brings.
Just a little filthy looker buys a lot of things.
(http://www.kovideo.net/lyrics/h/Hal-Kem … d-You.html)
What is much more widespread and curious is the adjective form: lookrative. It is clearly being used to indicate items having an expensive “look”, and I think it’s going further, into use as “looking good”:
iPhone review:
Advantages: It must be opined that the phone is very lookrative, handsome and useful
Disadvantages: very slim, high technology, sensitive, not water resistant, and not hard.
(http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/314534/+120)
Sweater warehouse Bangladesh:
7 gg ladies sweater/Cardigan. 100 % coton. 14lbs in weight. Lookrative print. Stable for Young ladies. Size Available
(http://www.tradekey.com/product_view/id/484957.htm)
Stable for jeunes filles or young fillies?
Ad campaign comment site, for an ad for a popular web gamesite called Spore:
Comment: Looks very Toy Machine to me.
Reply: the campaign is OK for me.
Reply: in a sense ot the spore world, they look so simple, but the spores are so lookrative!
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Fascinating. But not very eggcornish, in that the overall meaning is changed, and the changed form is used in different contexts than the original one was.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Ok, I follow you. I was thinking that this was somehow beyond an eggcorn, an ubereggcorn, because the sense of lucrative had been changed. You’re saying it’s more like a malapropism for “look”, or a blend of “look” and “lucrative” that no longer can be used for either. So an eggcorn should change the route to a destination, maybe even pass through a more picturesque landscape, but not change the destination itself. Someone would have to think that “looks” were the coin of the land in order for lookrative to qualify as an eggcorn. I buy it, thanks.
Last edited by burred (2009-04-23 08:37:51)
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