Eggcorn Forum

I think this one sort of works: the semantic overlap would mostly be “phrase used when talking politely”.

The standard phrase is talking about a kind of parallel alignment, but I think we speakers who use it are aware that we are using somewhat high-falutin’ language, and that many folk will either not understand the word or have to think about it a bit to understand what we are saying. Those who say respected have not caught on to the parallel thing (for them it comes without saying, from the context or just from blithe presumption), but do realize that the phrase sounds impressive/educated/polite or something. The word respected fits that meaning pretty well, especially the polite part (it refers directly to respect felt or at least shown to the owners).

Thus there is a very strong restructuring, enough so that this feels very malapropish and kem’s hesitation is quite understandable; yet the restructured phrase can be used virtually anyplace the original (“acorn”) phrase would fit.

It doesn’t work quite so well in phrases like “take your respected seats” where the modified noun is not a person:

Celebrity Poker Sowdown Taping – [ Traducir esta página ]
They then took their respected seats and Andrew went over the rules of the games and the procedures that would be used during taping.

[I liked the Sowdown; even though I don’t doubt that it was simply an omission typo, it brought images to mind of a flying pig getting shot out of the sky.]

Sometimes the idea that respect in the sense of politeness is in mind becomes a bit ludicrous.:

sear face causing the rear of the bolt to rise and the top locking lugs at the front of the bolt to move slightly forward, off their respected seats. ...

And sometimes the seat may actually be highly thought of:

Manchin has been quick to distance himself from the President, much to the same tune as other Democrats across the country are as they fight for their respected seats.

Anyhow, even when no respect is taken towards the modified noun, respect towards the addressee or towards the conversation in general may be intended; that may be a reasonable definition of what constitutes polite speech. It is much the same process that lets people use hopefully to describe not the way a certain action (the modified verb) is undertaken, but the attitude we hopefully all adopt as we contemplate the situation.