Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Here’s one I stumbled across recently: “he started writing in his 40s and didn’t stop until he left this earthly plain in 2008.”
“Plane/plain geometry”, “plane/plain sailing”, and “flood plane/plain” have been discussed here. Now we have “earthly plain”. Googling yields about 1000 unique hits.
I also googled “plane and simple” and got many hits, but nearly all were puns of airplane, handplane, geometric plane, etc. But a few of those are substitutions, such as:
Sugar causes tooth decay, plane and simple.
Plane and simple everyone has Video recorders and want to post on utube.
Plane and simple, the Four Winds is not managed well.
This is a meat market plane and simple.
Plus, we just want to see you, plane and simple.
Googling “plane as the nose” got a surprisingly large number of hits, many of which were puns, but also many of which were the substitution:
And the answer is as plane as the nose on your face.
Ooh-ooh-ooooh! it’s from the mercury in the vaccines that are causing it, it’s as plane as the nose on your face.
...there you have it, plane as the nose on my bug splattered face…
Why would you call your priests Father when in Matthew 23.9? it states plane as the nose on your face not to call anyone your father
I also got similar results googling “plane as day”—plenty of puns mixed with the substitution.
All of these seem like simple substitutions to me rather than eggcorns, as any meaning connection there might be in some examples would likely be attributable to the etymological relationship between “plain” and “plane”.
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Dixon Wragg wrote:
All of these seem like simple substitutions to me rather than eggcorns, as any meaning connection there might be in some examples would likely be attributable to the etymological relationship between “plain” and “plane”.
My interest in this set of substitutions was recently rekindled by my stumbling upon this:
The Laguna reminds us this is a flood plane….water is queen.
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Upon consideration, I feel that “plane” for “plain” could perhaps be considered an eggcorn in spite of the etymological connection, which the Online Etymological Dictionary summarizes thusly in its discussion of “plane”:
Introduced (perhaps by influence of French plan in this sense) to differentiate the geometrical senses from plain, which in mid-16c. English also meant “geometric plane.”
dictionary entry
We have accepted some substitutions as eggcorns in spite of etymological connections, although they are not quite as exciting as the more serendipitous eggcorns. Plus, “plane” and “plain” seem to have diverged about 500 years ago, so maybe an eggcorn?
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Agree, some kind of eggcorn. 500 years of separation ought to qualify for divorce.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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