Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Wheat was a major crop in the prairie lands where I grew up. Since wheat ripens early in the summer, especially when sowed and germinated in the autumn, we were always able to bring in a wheat crop, even in the driest of years. Weather was still an issue, though. Hail storms and wind storms increased in frequency in the weeks just before we harvested the winter wheat. A hard hail could shatter the drying heads, knocking the wheat berries to the ground. Strong winds could kink the stalk and make the wheat lie flat on the ground. In both cases the mature wheat was difficult, sometimes impossible, to harvest.
Wheat bent over far enough to lay on the ground was, in our rural tongue, “lodged wheat.†The use of the word “lodge†for this condition is an old term. Shakespeare knew it: in a speech to the witches Macbeth utters the phrase, “though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down.†This sense of the verb “lodge†presumably derives from the noun “lodge,†an old A-S term for a hut or a summer house. As it evolved, the verb came to mean to camp, to take housing, to reside, to fix in place, and ultimately to pin to the ground.
Like the stems of lodged wheat, the textbook etymology of “lodge†has a kink. In some older writers we find the verb “lay†used in exactly the sense of “lodge.†Wheat that was forced to the ground was “laid corn.†The verb “lay/laid†is derived from an Old English verb “ledge†(The current spellings of “lay” and “laid†are derived from inflected forms of “ledgeâ€). In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, before modern English settled into standardized spellings and pronunciations, we find the phrase “ledged corn†in some sources.
It seems highly likely that one of the verbs, either “ledge†or “lodge,†has eggcornically influenced the other. But which direction does the eggcorn go? The earliest OED citations for “ledged†and “lodged†as adjectives describing bent-over wheat are from the same period, the 1590s.
Last edited by kem (2009-06-02 00:15:05)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
Another beautifully written post on historical eggcorns—the first two paragraphs are virtually a prose poem. I’d never heard the term “lodged wheat,” but I’m glad to have made its acquaintance.
“Lodge” isn’t Anglo-Saxon—it’s apparently got Teutonic roots, but first appears in English in the Middle English period via French.
The problem of priority for these (i.e., lodge/ledge) reminds me of that old Language Log post on “to home in on”/”to hone in on” by Mark Liberman—he opined that many neologisms (or innovative uses of an older word) probably spawn their own eggcorns nearly immediately, and I suspect he’s right.
Speaking of which, I listened to President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor on the radio, and I was pleased to hear him use the eggcorn “hone in on” during the speech:
First and foremost is a rigorous intellect, a mastery of the law, an ability to hone in on the key issues and provide clear answers to complex legal questions.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld … 3066.story
[Edit: Here’s the URL for the LL post I mentioned: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language … 00378.html
It’s worth noting that about 8 months after ML wrote his piece, the OED revised their “hone” article—at least in the online draft version—to include “hone in on.”]Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-06-02 00:52:34)
Offline
One test that Liberman did not apply was difficilio lectio potior. Seems to me that we could argue “hone in on” is the original, since “hone in on” is a much less likely expansion of “home in on” than vice versa.
many neologisms (or innovative uses of an older word) probably spawn their own eggcorns nearly immediately
An interesting idea. Perhaps most eggcorns are simply the surviving exemplars of the expansion of neologisms into familiar semantic space. Perhaps we should call this the Vanishing Eggcorn Syndrome, after the now popular Vanishing Twin Syndrome (which should really be Vanishing Multiple Birth Syndrome, since it is not limited to twins). We could posit that neologisms and neosemanticisms immediately spawn all possible eggcorns. As the neo becomes more at home in the language community, it reabsorbs the worst of these, leaving behind only eggcorns good enough to consistently trip up a percentage of speakers.
Just thinking out loud.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline