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#1 2010-01-12 15:45:49

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2850

hair-brained << hare-brained

There has been a recent discussion on an IT forum about the words “hare-brained” and “hair-brained” and whether or not one is an eggcorn of the other.

Speakers and writers of English do get confused about “hair” and “hare.” In 2005 Chris added an entry to the Eggcorn database noting the frequent replacement of “hair’s breadth” with “hare’s breath” (On the issue of just how frequent “hare’s breath” is, though, see Chad’s comments in the forum.). We also find instances on the web of “hare shirt” and “hide nor hare of.”

These slips all replace “hair” with “hare.” The discussion about “hair-brained” raises the issue of a switch in the other direction, from “hare” to “hair.” This latter switch would appear to be the most likely one for a speaker of modern English, given the decline in the popularity of the word “hare” (In the corpus of Shakespeare, for example, “hare” is about five times more common than “rabbit;” in COCA the ratios are reversed). The thousands of examples of snowshoe hair on the Internet suggest that speakers do commonly substitute “hair” for “hare.” Whether “snowshoe hair” is more than a pail, though, is difficult to determine, while in the case of “hair-brained” for “hare-brained” the semantics of “hair” and “hare” mingle in a way that raises the eggcorn potential of the substitution.

The problem with calling “hair-brained” an eggcorn of “hare-brained,” however, is determining which one is the acorn and which one is the eggcorn. A quick check with the OED shows that both “hare-brain” and “hair-brain” have track records in the English language that are several centuries long. “Hare-brain” is thought to precede “hair-brain” by several decades, but it’s hard to be certain, since the earliest citations, from the mid sixteenth century, derive from a the period when English spelling was still in flux. In those days “hare” was sometimes spelled “hair” and vice versa. We don’t have enough contextual information in the early citations to know which imagery was being invoked by speakers who used the phrase. Still, the rabbit imagery (i.e., “hare-brained”) has the best claim to lie behind the original phrase, not only because the earliest citations use the spelling “hare,” but also because the proverb “brainless as a March hare,” a reference to the antic behavior of rabbits in the spring breeding season, was already current at the beginning of the sixteenth century.1 “Hair-brained,” then, by this way of thinking, comes along to replace the rabbit image with some vague picture of a doll or scarecrow whose head is stuffed with hair. Or perhaps even hinting at a person whose head hair grows inward instead of outward.

Addendum: I see four examples on the web of this odd permutation of “hair-/hare-brained:”

Military forum: “I think it was such a hair-grained scheme the ‘powers that be’ back in Britain vetoed it straightaway. ”

Hard to imagine what the writers/speakers have in mind.
——
1 Much later the proverb would become the source of Lewis Carroll’s March Hare character in Alice in Wonderland .

Last edited by kem (2010-01-13 00:12:14)


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#2 2010-01-12 21:59:28

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2712
Website

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

“More hair than wit” fits in with the idea of hairbrainedness.
.
I thought we had had a longish discussion involving hairball ideas and going hairwire, but I don’t seem to be finding it. (The Internet service I’m connected to is doing funny things.)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#3 2010-01-12 22:48:16

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

David, were you thinking of an older post of yours? There’s one here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2871

I coulda sworn I’d read a discussion of this at Language Log or somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe I was just thinking of Arnold Z’s analysis in the Database, but it’s pretty short.

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#4 2010-01-12 23:10:31

jorkel
Eggcornista
Registered: 2006-08-08
Posts: 1456

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

Nicely researched Kem. This type of effort is the most delightful part the forum.

At first blush neither “hare-brained” nor “hair-brained” made any sense to me (as far as imagery is concerned). You sure had to go back a few centuries to shed light on the situation… and even then it’s a shame that the spelling rules didn’t help out the situation.

Last edited by jorkel (2010-01-12 23:19:26)

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#5 2010-01-18 11:45:33

Azure-rumped Tanager
Member
Registered: 2009-09-17
Posts: 5
Website

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

Really enjoyable post: great amount of detailed and interesting research!
On the basis of what you have stated I would be drawn to conclude that “hare-brained” is the acorn.


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#6 2013-05-06 05:28:06

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

And, FWIW, here’s the latest example I’ve stumbled upon (from an online discussion about movies):

She sets her sights on the owner of the bar and soon a hair-brained scheme to knock off his alcoholic wife is hatched.

Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2017-05-30 22:38:17)

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#7 2013-05-08 14:40:55

larrybob
Eggcornista
Registered: 2007-12-26
Posts: 96

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

The association between hair and braids could lead to this variation (many of the instances of which seem to be intentional puns, but not these.)

ski discussion board: “Powder needs a realistic answer that is financially possible and not hair braid scheme just to suit our needs to ski in October as before”

TV essay: “For example, in the episode “The Hair-Braided Scheme” on the show The Brady Bunch, they happened to flow the opening scenes right into the plot so there was almost no time lost.”
The actual name of the episode is The Hair-Brained Scheme: and it does not seem to involve a braid-wearing member of the Brady Bunch.

Twitter: “Someone just said “hair braid scheme” instead of “harebrained scheme” so I’ll be over here banging my head against the wall if you need me.”

There are also a lot of puns out there about string theory being “hair-braned.” This sort of brane is short for membrane.

Last edited by larrybob (2013-05-08 14:43:10)

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#8 2013-05-08 17:13:45

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2850

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

“Hair braid scheme” Tops.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#9 2014-01-08 20:58:36

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

The post from 2007 that touched on hairbrains and hairballs is here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?id=2081.

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#10 2014-07-23 17:15:45

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2850

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

Somehow we missed the entry in the database on hairbrained/harebrained: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/280/hairbrained/


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#11 2016-04-02 23:06:08

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

And here’s another variation:

About one in 700 babies born in the UK have a cleft palate (also called a ‘*hairlip*’)
article

He got in a lot of fights; kids called him hair-lip and other names. He was born with a cleft lip and his family didn’t have the money for surgery.
novel

Cleft lip (often referred to incorrectly as a “hair lip” or more appropriately as palatoschisis or congenital oronasal fistula) and cleft palate are birth defects that occur when a puppy’s lip or mouth do not form properly during pregnancy.
veterinary article

Hair lip surgery and top jaw reconstruction
begging for money

A guy with a hair lip goes into a Wal Mart looking for a salesman job.
old joke

Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2017-05-30 22:36:14)

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#12 2016-04-05 07:08:40

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2850

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

I wonder what imagery could induce the switch to hairlip? Seems like it might be a simple misspelling.

Last edited by kem (2016-04-05 07:09:00)


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#13 2016-04-05 15:37:38

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

kem wrote:

I wonder what imagery could induce the switch to hairlip? Seems like it might be a simple misspelling.

It could easily be a mere misspelling. But it’s possible that “hairline crack” may have some influence in some of these cases. It’s also possible that some perps assume a bit of hairiness accompanies the condition. And it’s even possible that some perps assume “hare” is spelled “hair”, with perhaps an assumption that hairs/hares are extremely furry.

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#14 2016-05-22 18:31:25

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: hair-brained << hare-brained

kem wrote:

I wonder what imagery could induce the switch to hairlip? Seems like it might be a simple misspelling.

“Hairline fracture” is a good one, Dixon.

In no useful way, I want to add a story that comes unbidden to mind. When I was a lad of ten (or “lead of tin” I always heard from the song “Lemon Tree”), I was constantly in the school principal’s office for some mister meaner or other. In those dark days, more often than not, we would receive severe corporal punishment in the form of 1 to 10 lashes across the palm with a leather strap, reserved for miscreants like me and sadists like my principals. When we cried, the principal would smirk.

Our only defence was to make up stories of revenge (or to exact revenge in the form of raids on the principal’s office to steal his lunch – that’s a story for another day). One favourite scenario was the chance of causing him to injure himself by withdrawing your hand at the last moment. Another was the story of how you could get him into serious trouble by secretly preparing your hand ahead of time. The claim was that you could cause him to split your hand open, causing profuse bleeding, for which our parents would be alerted (and, one hoped, not add to the punishment). The trick was to hide a hair on your palm, by gluing it in place with hand soap from the washroom before showing up at his door. I never tried it – I was sure that the overpowering aroma of that industrial concoction would give the ruse away and he would go double.

BTW, here’s Trini Lopez singing about smelting.

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