Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
We have yet to note on this site the common confusion between “elegy†and “eulogy.â€
Historically an elegy is a poem, usually in Latin or Greek, with a specific meter. Elegiac poetry from the classical period could be sad, funny, bawdy, or satirical. By the eighteenth century the term “elegy†had shifted its meaning and was used to refer to poems or songs that were somber or reflective, irrespective of the meter employed. Thomas Gray’s famous “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard†is the voucher specimen for this later application of the term. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, etc.
Eulogies are also associated with death: they are speeches delivered on an occasion when a death is remembered.
An elegy could serve as a eulogy and a eulogy, if sung or spoken in verse, could be an elegy. Still, it seems best to keep the terms distinct. Not everyone does, though. As the examples below show, speakers have a tendency to use “elegy†when they mean “eulogy.†Does the sad event recalled by a eulogy lead speakers to bridge to the morose semantics of “elegy?†Or do speakers who have read Thomas Gray’s poem remember its appended epitaph (“Here rests his head upon the lap of earth”) and suppose that an elegy and a eulogy are the same thing?
An old blog: “There is an equally sharp picture engraved in my mind: That of her body in the coffin after her funeral, during which I gave the elegy. â€
Book forum: “He gave the elegy for my Dad at Dad’s service in Sylva, NC, although he had many problems he himself was dealing with at the time you would never have known it.â€
Wine guide: “Jancis Robinson delivered an elegy to cork at the faux funeral, referring to its “utter darned ridiculousness as a 21st century stopper”.â€
Blog entry: “I would imagine the dead rising from their coffins and shuffling around during the elegy – and, if I could, I would sit as far from the body as possible (which never happened because I was always the cousin or niece of the corpse). I’ve never done well at funerals. â€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
Good find; One of the best of the year, and very surprising that we overlooked it for so long. Although it could be a malapropism, I think the two words share enough common meaning to throw this in the eggcorn category.
Offline
Eloquent. I was surprised to find that there is a word in unabridged dictionaries that blends the two officially: an elogy. I happened upon it because the French make _éloges_, which dictionaries admit is a French courgette of elegies and eulogies.
Offline
Kem wrote:
Elegiac poetry from the classical period could be sad, funny, bawdy, or satirical. By the eighteenth century the term “elegy†had shifted its meaning and was used to refer to poems or songs that were somber or reflective, irrespective of the meter employed.
Kem’s comment about the wide range of use of the term in the classical period seems to be right on the money. But according to the OED, it took a while for English usage to reflect that particular classical usage. When the word first entered English (1517 is the earliest citation date), it already had funereal associations, and the OED gives this as its first definition:
1. A song of lamentation, esp. a funeral song or lament for the dead.
The most specific classical sense of the term seems to have been introduced by Puttenham in 1589:
3. a. Poetry, or a poem, written in elegiac metre.
And it wasn’t until 1600 that Shakespeare’s As You Like It and other works started to reflect the broadest senses that the term had already acquired in classical sources:
2. Vaguely used in wider sense, app. originally including all the species of poetry for which Gr. and Lat. poets adopted the elegiac metre.
So the somber associations of “elegy” appear to have been present in English usage from the very beginning, and that use predates the broader use by most of a century.
Edmund Spenser was already playing with the resemblance between “elegy” and “eulogy” in his poem “The Teares of the Muses,” published in 1591. He has the Muse Erato declare:
Now change your praises into piteous cries,
And eulogies turne into elegies.
Spenser’s use of the two terms seems obviously to acknowledge their earliest meanings in Greek (elegy=mournful poem; eulogy=praise). And that makes me wonder whether the semiotic ambivalence of both terms in English doesn’t help motivate the substitution Kem highlighted. Both terms can be used in the context of lament; and both terms also have senses that have nothing to do with mourning or lament. If you’re trying to figure out which word is the “sad” one based on various uses that you’ve encountered, you may be outta luck.
So is the substitution of “elegy” for “eulogy” an eggcorn? It’s unquestionably a flounder, but the people who have weighed in on the topic are divided on whether flounders are eggcorns. Chris Waigl early on said they weren’t. Arnold Zwicky at first disagreed, but then adopted Chris’ position when he coined the term “flounder.” David Tuggy has voiced agreement with Chris and Arnold. Kem has in the past disagreed, as has—I think—Joe. The last time we talked about all this at length—2 years ago—I was sitting on the fence. But I think I’ve since slid on over to the territory staked out by Chris, Arnold and David.
(Later edit: I myself inadvertently swapped “eulogy” and “elegy” in the last paragraph; fixed now.)
Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-11-14 19:44:41)
Offline
So the somber associations of “elegy†appear to have been present in English usage from the very beginning, and that use predates the broader use by most of a century.
We can see some slightly earlier citations than the ones Pat cites by looking up “elegiac” in the OED.
Perhaps it would help to distinguish the concept from the word. Clearly, learned scholars had the classic concept of elegiac poetry in their heads many centuries before they got around to Anglicizing the Latin “elegia.” The word “elegy” in its lamentation sense, in contrast, seems to have arisen as a joined English word/concept in the sixteenth century. Possibly the word with the new meaning arose from a confusion with the Latin “elogium,” a short epitaph, which entered English as “elogy” (see David B’s post above) before the 1570s. But who knows? English, as we have often observed here, has no copyright on eggcorns: the confusion between “elegy” and “elogy” may have been present in academic Latin and borrowed into English during the Latin assimilations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Last edited by kem (2010-11-13 13:12:20)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline