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
Noted on the Straight Dope column online:
Sometimes when I am sleeping I will jerk and wake myself up. My friends say that I am dreaming about falling, and that if I hadn’t jerked and woke myself up I would have died. Is this true? I mean, the only thing I could fall off of when I am sleeping is my bed. But I don’t believe I could die. Uncle Cecil, is this an old wise tail?
Offline
I like it! (The wise < wives’ part anyway: tail < tale looks like a spelling malapropism, though tail/tale may have eggcorn potential in some contexts.) Old wise tale ought to work wherever old wives’ tale did.
There seem to be a good many hits, though a lot of them are probably advertent. Some meaning extensions too. E.g.:
I have tried medicated shampoo that didn’t work, Now I am trying the old wise tale of borax and 3% hydrogen peroxide, and let me be the one to tell you that this stuff actually is working.
Do the rest of you call folk remedies old wives’/wise tales? Note that in this context it was a folk remedy that actually did work, so wise seems especially appropriate (and non-facetious, unlike in wise-guys . Old wise tale in some other contexts may partake of that facetiousness.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2011-10-12 17:35:24)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
And this one’s kind of an old wise tale hereabouts as well…
Offline
Oy, I meant to check to see if it was already reported, got sidetracted (=distracked), and didn’t. Thanks for catching us up on that one.
.
Interesting to me that the database entry doesn’t seem to mention the acorn, “old wives’â€, anywhere in the writeup. Too politically incorrect? But it’s not an eggcorn without it.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline