Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Hi folks,
A friend said “I second that emotion” yesterday. It has an entry in the Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p … %20emotion). Apparently it’s also the title of a song (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Second_That_Emotion) which makes searching for example a little difficult.
Mags
ps I’ve just registered, so please forgive me if I’m missing some etiquette.
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Welcome to the forum, teragram. You don’t appear to have any etiquette problems as far as I can see.
I grew up with the Smokey Robinson song “I Second That Emotion,” so I’ve usually figured that most of the uses of that phrase were jocular allusions to the hit tune. But there have been a few times in the last years when I too have heard it used in a way that made me wonder whether the speaker was aware of the standard phrase.
If people honestly think the parliamentary phrase is “I second that emotion,” is it an eggcorn? Over the years, we’ve developed a few “tests” for eggcornicity on this forum. The “etymology test” and the “new imagery test” are both relevant here. A reshaping can be an eggcorn only if it seems to be using different imagery than the standard phrase while suggesting the same basic meaning. If a standard word and its reshaping are obviously related etymologically, then there’s a possibility that they substitute easily for each other just because words that share an origin often have a good deal of semantic overlap—and in those cases, the imagery involved tends not to be very different.
“Motion” and “emotion” share an origin in the same Latin root (“movere,” to move), and the connection is still alive in the language—people in the grip of strong emotion are said to be “moved.” So some of us might not feel that this passes the etymological test. Personally, I’m not sure—I think the usual meanings of “motion” and “emotion” are so different that many speakers are probably completely oblivious to the connection.
I’m still not certain whether many people are using this unknowingly, however. It’s possible that it has become something like “Old Timer’s Disease” for “Alzheimer’s Disease”; I think that substitution MUST have originated as a joke—the phrases are just too far apart in sound—but I’ve seen plenty of testimony from people who have heard others use it in earnest, so it’s likely that “Old Timer’s” has “gone feral” as an eggcorn. Maybe “second that emotion,” has too. I’d like to see examples that clearly look serious and non-jocular.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2009-10-07 23:25:44)
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