Eggcorn Forum

I saw this today in an Alley Oop comic strip from 1934: ”..the gape of its cadaverous mouth measured more than four feet!” The creature being described, a Dinichthys, didn’t seem particularly cadaverous—it was hale and hearty—so I assume the writer was making an eggcornish substitution for “cavernous”. Googling “cadaverous maw” yielded only 21 hits, some of which were redundant, and the contexts in which the term “cavernous maw” are used are typically lethally threatening situations, so in most cases it was uncertain whether “cavernous” or “cadaverous” is really meant.

With a ritualistic fervor, he began to pour the ash into his cadaverous maw.

Should he manage to survive all of the deadly levels, he must then proceed into the cadaverous maw of the House of Flesh itself where he will come face-to- face with the Red Watcher in the final clash of vein-popping and disease flinging combat.

He lowered his cadaverous maw to her, breath cold as a desert night, teeth glinting like translucent fish bones.

A malicious grin slowly spread itself on Khaos’s cadaverous maw.

[Khaos is a live wolf, so could hardly be cadaverous. This must’ve been a substitution for “cavernous”.]

Like a huge black funnel, with its cadaverous maw seeking to gulp down everything within its reach,. THE DEATH-DEALING CLOUD. came swooping down.

[ That one’s from an 1886 newspaper account of a tornado. I think “cavernous” was meant.]

Critics and dullards only see the poorly applied pink render, cheap windows and the cadaverous maw of a Foxtons estate agent daring ask for half of one million pounds…

Googling “cadaverous opening” was even less productive.