Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I’ve got to send a big thanks to Merl Reagle for his recent eggcorn-themed crossword puzzle in the Philly Inquirer. I’m an amateur this whole eggcorn thing, so apologies if I’m supposed to analyze the two words on this forum. Some contributions included analyses; some did not. The rules didn’t clarify whether this should go here or in “Eggcornology”, so I put it here.
I recently stumbled upon an argument about whether the correct term is “sun cream” or “sunscreen”. Since the two seem to be used interchangeably, I wasn’t sure if it qualifies. Thoughts?
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Oooooh. I love it. I don’t have time to investigate the details, but at first blush it looks like a winner.
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Fools rush in. Here goes:
I don’t get it. Which is the eggcorn? At least in the UK both terms are used. Neither is a derivative of the other.
“Sunscreen – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sunscreen, also commonly known as sun cream, is a lotion, spray, gel or other topical product that absorbs or reflects some of the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) ...”
“An adult should apply a handful of sun cream, equivalent to 30 to 40g. www.netdoctor.co.uk/travel”
“As Britain swelters, school head bans sun cream for children www.dailymail.co.uk”
“Glastonbury 2010: Who forgot the sun cream? www.guardian.co.uk”
Now if it were ‘sunscream’ I could see the point. What am I missing? Am I going to look extremely stupid?
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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I have to agree with Juan23.
First, technically, we’re not talking about eggcorns here because both terms are standard and widely used. Eggcorns are by definition non-standard.
But could one have inspired the other? The OED lists both words, and gives the following as the first citations:
1966 L. COHEN Beautiful Losers I. 91 There is a tube of sun cream in the glove compartment.
1958 Which? I. IV. 17/2 Some sunscreens are lotions, some oils, some creams, others aerosols.
This would appear to show that “sunscreen” is the earlier form, and suggests, too, that a Leonard Cohen novel might have been influential in spreading “sun cream.” I adore Leonard Cohen and enjoy thinking of him as a lexical pioneer, but it’s easy to find antedatings for both words. The Chicago Defender newspaper carried an ad for a “Sun Cream and Sun Food” (“For protecting the exposed skin from the sun and wind”) in its Oct. 4, 1919 issue. A few such ads turn up in the 1920s, and by the 30s the product is common. The earliest citations I found for “sunscreen” used it as a modifier. The New York Times for June 12, 1938 advertised an Elizabeth Arden “Sunproof cream. Sunscreen powder foundation to regulate your tan.” There are some other citations for this usage around the same time. It took a few years before I could find occurrences of “a sunscreen,” with the term being used as a noun, but the Washington Post has an ambiguous instance on July 2, 1942, and the New York Times has a clearer one on July 26, 1943. After WWII, both terms become pretty common, and I saw them being used as synonyms for each other in the same sentence by the early 1950s. The poor OED is lagging way behind the electronic databases on some things these days.
So both terms have been around a while, and “sun cream”—much less familiar to me—actually seems to be the older one. But I don’t see much evidence that one developed as an eggcorn of the other. If “sunscreen” had developed from “sun cream” by an eggcornical route, I’d expect it to be showing up as a noun first. But it seems to have served a short apprenticeship as a modifier before striking out on its own—perhaps the use of such products in the tropics during WWII got the public used to these terms. Also, “sun cream” usually appears as two words, “sunscreen” as one—you’d probably expect a lot more structural mimicry if one had clearly developed out of the other.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-07-09 03:20:11)
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There are numerous ghits for the single word ‘sunscream’ which , I think, lends support to the hypothesis that some kind of mixing or confused substitution is going on.
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Is “suncream” purely a UK term then? In the US I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bottle labeled “suncream” or “sun cream”, while there are plenty labeled “sunscreen”.
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Ken Lakritz wrote:
There are numerous ghits for the single word ‘sunscream’ which , I think, lends support to the hypothesis that some kind of mixing or confused substitution is going on.
No question there. “Sun cream” and “sunscreen” have effectively been synonyms for about 70 years, and they’re structurally similar—it’d be downright bizarre if they weren’t hybridizing now. From what I can tell, any two words that close in sound and meaning are going to get blended by some speakers.
But the question here is whether one arose as an eggcorn of the other—and current hits for “sunscream” don’t help answer that. Also, it’s really hard to analyze the “sunscream” results—many of the hits are by non-native speakers, the word “sunscream” is used in many punning ways (in songtitles, blog names, noms de web, etc.), and “sunscream” can also be a secondary misspelling of the extremely common “sunscrean.”
On the other hand, the kind of analysis I was trying to do also has all sorts of built-in weaknesses. Most obviously, you have to wonder what my results would have looked like if the Web had existed in the 1920s-1940s. My newspaper databases only allow me to see what editors were allowing to get through; maybe “sun cream” had already spun off an eggcornical oral variant “sun screen” in the 1920s, and nobody wrote it down. I’m a little skeptical, but I’m under no illusion that the 45 minutes I put into research produced definitive results.
Tyler wrote:
Is “suncream†purely a UK term then? In the US I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bottle labeled “suncream†or “sun creamâ€, while there are plenty labeled “sunscreenâ€.
I don’t know—maybe JuanTwoThree could chime in and tell us about UK usage. But my impression is the same as yours. We Californians use a lot of sunscreen, and I never notice anyone calling it “sun cream.” But you can certainly find lots of sun creams on Amazon.com (and even a “sunscreen sun cream”).
Life Magazine—a very American institution—had three issues in the late 1940s in which “sun cream” was mentioned in either ads or articles. But there are no hits for “sun screen” or “sunscreen.” (I did get a hit for “sun screens” in 1950, but the article was referring to screens that go over windows.) Now, by contrast, “sunscreen” seems to be everywhere in American media, and “sun cream” is often reserved for pricey lotions. Somewhere in there usage seems to have shifted. I think the associations of the word “cream” may have a lot to do with this—there were lots of complaints about the thickness and/or oiliness of early sun creams, and using “sunscreen” may be a way of distancing one’s product from those problems.
And I don’t know how the pre-existence of “sun screens” for windows plays in to all this. For whatever reason, my instincts would be to use the two-word “sun screen” for the things that go in front of windows and the one-word “sunscreen” for the skin lotion. But it’s hard to tell from the internet search results how widely those impulses are shared.
David Bird wrote:
Why you need to fear the sun
I’d forgotten about Jorkel’s hilarious “ultraviolent rays” find. Thanks for bringing it up.
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I don’t know about ‘sun cream’ being only BrE but it raises no hackles with me, though nor do ‘sunscreen’ or ‘sun tan lotion’ for that matter. There seem to be lots of Google hits in the UK for it. I feel that ‘sun cream’ might be said by an older person, though.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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I (an older person, I reckon — I’m 60) might say either, but they don’t mean the same thing to me. Sun cream is something to keep your skin from damage by sunburn, but it doesn’t necessarily or primarily work by blocking the sun’s rays, rather by soothing, moisturizing/lubricating and perhaps repairing the skin those rays hit. It’s the same sort of thing as tanning lotion, only less nearly liquid. (Some tanning lotions are actually quite creamy and could be called sun creams.) Sunscreen, however, must block at least some of the rays from ever penetrating the skin to be worthy of the name. Most sun creams nowadays contain effective sun-blocking compounds —they didn’t use to— so the prevalence of sunscreen in current usage is understandable.
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Independent formations, for me, nothing eggcornical going on. Of course it doesn’t follow that that’s the case for everybody, but I would guess it is for a good many.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Sun cream is something to keep your skin from damage by sunburn, but it doesn’t necessarily or primarily work by blocking the sun’s rays, rather by soothing, moisturizing/lubricating and perhaps repairing the skin those rays hit. [....] Sunscreen, however, must block at least some of the rays from ever penetrating the skin to be worthy of the name.
I wish actual usage were so clearly defined. In the thirties and early forties, I can’t find any trace of a commercial product that calls itself a “sunscreen,” and I don’t think the kind of clear, liquid preparation we typically call “sunscreens” today existed commercially. But people were already discussing “sunscreen preparations” and “sunscreens” in the early forties. As far as I can tell, they were referring to what you call sun creams. Most of the time, these writers seem to make a distinction between sun-blocking “sun creams” on the one hand, and “suntan lotions” on the other. Though there were a few cases where I just couldn’t tell whether there was a difference for the writer.
And I’m still getting confused today. If you go to the Wikipedia page on “sunscreen,” they say right off the bat that sunscreens and sun creams are the same thing. The footnote for this assertion leads you to an elaborate, professional, and well-presented page on preventing sunburn and skin cancer on the Web site of a UK charity specializing in cancer prevention. It’s here: http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/type/melan … noma#cream That page has a section where they seem to distinguish between “sun creams” and “sunblocks,” and the distinction sounds awfully like the difference you’re drawing between sun cream and sunscreen. But if you actually read the page, their description of the nature and use of sun creams sounds awfully like what I’d call “sunscreens.” They only use the word “sunscreen” twice, and in each case they put ”(sun cream)” in parentheses, as if to indicate that sun creams and sunscreens are synonyms. Aarrghh! The usage on the Wikipedia page parallels that of the UK cancer prevention site—the Wiki article also makes a distinction between sun cream/sunscreen on the one hand, and sunblock on the other. Professional retailers are hip to all this. It’s easy to find sites selling a single product, but covering all the bases:
2010 NEW Carmex sunscreen/sun cream/sunblock/suntan lotion 24pcs/lot(SPF50+PA+++, 35ml) CLEAN, not oily
http://www.tradetang.com/for-sale/2010- … 6241.html#
Here’s where many of my students would write, “In conclusion….” The words “sun cream” and “sunscreen” both came into widespread use at a time when—as far as I can tell—only something answering to your description of sun cream existed. As the variety of products available has increased, some speakers and manufacturers appear to have used the different terms to differentiate between the distinct types. But that practice is apparently far from universal, and the situation is complicated by other terms like “suntan lotion,” “sunblock,” and others.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-07-09 17:06:36)
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I didn’t mean to imply that my usage is clearly and neatly divided. As I implied, many sun creams do block the sun and may therefore be called sunscreens as well. Similarly, many sunscreens have emolluents (instead of efflients I suppose) and other ingredients which should help the skin survive the rays that are not blocked, and are creamy enough in consistency that they could quite well be called sun creams. If meaning is reference only, then the terms are hardly distinct at all. What I am claiming is that when/if I use (speaking/writing or hearing/reading) the term sun cream, the creamy consistency and emollient, soothing qualities are emphasized in my mind, and when I use sunscreen, the blocking qualities are emphasized. Very many products are both.
In any case, even if the meanings are taken as identical, it is not an eggcorn. For such users as I.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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What I am claiming is that when/if I use (speaking/writing or hearing/reading) the term sun cream, the creamy consistency and emollient, soothing qualities are emphasized in my mind, and when I use sunscreen, the blocking qualities are emphasized.
David—I like your nomenclatural system very much, and I think it deserves much wider use.
I just spent about an hour on LexisNexis, however, and it’s clear that among one well-defined group—journalists who write on health issues—your system is virtually unheard-of. British journalists use “sun cream” as a generic term to refer to sprays, lotions, and creams. They sometimes use “sunscreen” as a synonym, but I couldn’t find a single person making a distinction between the two, and the use of both in the same paragraph is very common.
American journalists seem to avoid “sun cream” like the plague. Among the first 250 hits for “sun cream” on LexisNexis in the last two years, I couldn’t find an unambiguous citation by an American journalist referring to any product of any kind. I’m sure such citations are out there somewhere, but the use of “sun cream” is clearly rare among Americans writing for newspapers. On the other hand, they use “sunscreen” as a broad term to refer to sprays, lotions and creams of every kind and consistency. (Australian journalists use both terms, but sunscreen appears to be more prevalent there. Canadians were, as always, utterly inscrutable.)
Some writers on both sides of the Atlantic considered “sunblocks” a different beast altogether. If a writer made a point of distinguishing between two kinds of products, it was almost inevitably between thick, gooey sunblocks on the one hand, and lighter sunscreens/sun creams on the other. Since about 2008, however, more and more writers have taken pains to tell their readers that true “sunblocks” don’t exist, and that we should rely more on clothing and shade for protection from UV rays.
I don’t know how well journalistic use reflects usage among us rank-and-file types, but I’m getting the sense that today the sun cream/sunscreen divide usually has a lot more to do with the regional provenance of the speaker than with the type of product referred to.
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klakritz wrote:
There are numerous ghits for the single word ‘sunscream’ which , I think, lends support to the hypothesis that some kind of mixing or confused substitution is going on.
sunscream is featured in today’s Frazz:
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