Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Joe (jorkel) wrote:
It’s interesting to see these old posts dragged up with snappy new variants. It’s also interesting that the originals never made it into the Eggcorn Database. In fact, fewer than 30 eggcorns have been added to that list of 630 since I began posting in the summer of 2006, and only one of those 30 was mine … and maybe only 10-15 from this forum. By now I’ve suggested well over 100 (and many other forum contributors have each suggested dozens as well). Just some curious math which suggests that high-level interest in eggcorns has been on the wane for several years now even while we experience wave after wave of inspiration in the forum … the most recent wave being the spate of 10 or so excellent eggcorns this past month.
I’ve copied this from the “seed change†thread as it seems to belong more here than there.
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I agree that the current situation is deplorable, though to be sure we’re having fun, and maybe that’s the most important thing. Still …
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Could we do something short of staging a palace coup or a rebellion, and ask the powers that be if maybe you and Pat, or Pat and Kem, or Kem and David B, be empowered to add stuff to the Database? (Maybe for safety’s sake they should both be in agreement on anything to go up.) There is indeed a whole lot of material that we have dug up or come across since Summer ’06.
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(If you all are willing to do this. It would be a lot of work. For which reason, count me out of the list of candidates, I think!)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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David—As you know, there’s an earlier thread on this page about more or less the same topic: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=1824
And my memory is that there’s at least one other thread somewhere talking about creating short lists of high-priority eggcorns that should make it into the Database. Am I making that up? And if not, does anyone remember where it was?
Anyhow, something similar to what you’ve proposed here was also floated a few years ago, and nothing ultimately came of it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth broaching the topic again, but we do have to get Chris on board before anything like this can happen.
Chris herself suggested getting together a “short list” of material that should go into the Database. Maybe it’d be worthwhile talking about about, say, the 40-50 items from the forum and its predecessor that we’d like to see prioritized. I’d suggest avoiding material from 2010, so we can have the benefit of hindsight on that material. And with the last few years, we’ve got the annual best-of lists as a help.
I don’t know how we’d go about deciding on a final list—consensus has never been our strong suit—but it might be fun to try.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-07-15 20:43:58)
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