Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Caught this one in an email (from my sister, yet). I think I have heard it, too, and it may well be standard in some parts of the South (where my sister lives). It is hard to separate out the online instances from other usages, but there seem to be a reasonable number of examples online, including the second and following examples:
Oh, and when I was putting up some tools earlier, I saw the first snake of the season in my tool shed. A little black head poking out about an inch away from the nail I hang the maddox on.
The floors of the downstairs were made of puncheon and the split trees were smoothed with a maddox, round sides flattened at each end, and the floor fit
Dad gets out the team of Clydesdale horses called ‘Left arm’ and ‘Right arm’, furrowing a trench just a hair deeper than the grand canyon with a maddox.
The first few days in the military were spent clearing and “grubbing†brush with a maddox at Fort Thomas, Kentucky.
its a lot more fun than digging miles of trenches in the red hot sun with a maddox and long handle shovel thing.
Use a hand tool such as a maddox or pick to score the ground. Using a shovel, dig the trench to the needed depth.
you can do it your self by drilling a lot of holes in the stump with an auger drill bit and then filling them with a corrosive acid that you can get at most tree nurseries, the stump will rot in a relatively short period of time and it will then chip out easily with a Maddox, or an AXE.
It seems susceptible of arising from the plural mattocks being reinterpreted as a singular: there are a number of contexts in which either singular or plural could be meant by a speaker and a hearer can misinterpret those. However, this is not a noun that is commonly pluralized; the implement that it denotes is not commonly used in groups.
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I didn’t easily find any examples of the presumed plural form maddoxes , but they may be out there.
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The last cited example is interesting in that the word is capitalized. (So is AXE, for some reason I do not understand—perhaps the writer intended some kind of emphasis, e.g. ‘especially/preferentially an axe’.) It is at least likely that in that case, and quite possibly in the others as well, the users perceive the last name Maddox. I would suppose that in that case they suppose that someone named Maddox invented the implement or manufactured it. (I am writing my sister to find out if she thinks of it that way.)
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Such eponymous usages are common enough, of course. And we have debated them and related phenomena in the petty-Annie and Lehmann’s terms threads and elsewhere. I continue to feel that those are a legitimate subspecies of eggcorns, fwtw, and if so this thread might rightly go in the “contributions†section of the site rather than in the slips & innovations area. Note however that this case is a whole substituting for a whole, which (or so I have argued) does not fit the prototype for the category of eggcorns. I.e., it is not like there is a fixed phrase or other context in which maddox is substituted for mattock without changing the phrasal meaning; rather anywhere mattock could be used maddox could presumably be so also. In this way it is more like a standard malapropism.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-04-25 06:08:18)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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My sister says she calls it a maddox because that’s what her husband calls it—she didn’t particularly think of the family name, though she did spell it as she did. When growing up she called it (as I did) a pick—apparently it’s the kind with a wide blade on one side and a sharp thin pick on the other.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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This problem looks pretty different from the other side of one of the forum’s chief ideological divides. I don’t think mattock>>Maddox is an eggcorn since the capitalization indicates the user is thinking of the surname, and I can’t see any connection between the name and garden implements. I continue to feel that a clear semantic connection between the original and the reshaping is the sine qua non of eggcornicity. For me, the whole/part consideration is irrelevant because I don’t even get that far with this one.
But I’m not actually ready to consign your find to the realm of malaprops. It’s the “ox” that interests me here. Mattocks are my absolute favorite garden tools—they make the heavy work of turning over soil or removing thick weeds relatively fast and even kinda fun. The connection of the broad-bladed mattock with the broad-shouldered ox—a beast that patiently endures hard labor and makes it much easier for humans—works for me on at least a couple of levels. And you don’t even need to resort to the M/maddox spelling—there are also examples of (singular) mattox out there. The singular nature of ”-ox” in this case might be supported by “ax,” a tool that’s similar in a number of ways. (I found three citations that referred to the implement as “a mattax,” but that appears to be rare.) The existence of words like “sawhorse” might also provide something of a nomenclatural template for “mattox,” though in the case of “sawhorse” looks seem to have inspired the name much more than function.
“Maddox/mattox” is of course a single-yolker, with the final syllable providing all of the reshaping’s semantic transparency.
So while I predictably disagree with your analysis, I think this is a good find.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-04-25 17:40:18)
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Please note:
(1) English licenses the replacement of unfamiliar words with proper names that have a sound similar to that of the unfamiliar word.
(2) These replacements are not eggcorns, unless all or part of the proper name can be invested with the semantics of a non-proper noun.
Kem is not here. This is an automatic reply triggered by the occurrence of the phrases “Annie Lehmann” and “eggcorn” in the same post.
Last edited by kem (2009-04-25 18:58:58)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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David—The Anti-Lehmannite faction on the forum has both moderates and hardliners. You should consider funneling money to the moderates in hopes of augmenting their sway.
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No! Baddle it out to the boldly end! Let the ships fail where they may, and may the betsman win! (Besides, I’m short on cash at the moment.)
*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’m not sure this makes any sense, but…
When a surname is used in connection with an implement, one assumes that it corresponds to the inventor. So, we certainly have this pattern to act as a template. Now, since Maddox is widely recognized as a surname, one may feel justified in assuming that someone named Maddox is the inventor—although this assumption would be wrong.
I will grant that when one thinks he hears an implement being called a Maddox for the first time, he has no prior associations with the name Maddox in particular—no semantics. He might just as easily forget the name after the first hearing and accidentally call it a Mannix or a Madigan the next time. Again, there is no semantics to anchor the association. Even so, the substitution will alway be a surname used where the name of an inventor seems indicated. Given that template, I think that the reshaping is a little more thoughtful than your garden variety malapropism.
About all that most malapropisms have going for them is the humorous effect when some like-sounding word is being used in place of the correct word. When a malapropism is corrected (by revealing the true meaning of both words involved), the utterer is left with nothing but embarrassment. But at least a person who wrongly postulated “Maddox” can continue to say: “It sounded like the well-known surname Maddox, so I thought the implement was named for some inventor with that name.” Therefore, I’m comfortable having the “Annie Lehmann” category as a refined subcategory of malapropisms (even if it has to reside outside of the eggcorn category).
Last edited by jorkel (2009-04-26 11:13:56)
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