Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I have held out as long as I could, but when a person I paid to do a media transfer (LP to CD) failed to do it correctly the first time—and then did it again—my patience lessened.
“There was a problem with my stylist.”
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A not uncommon mistake. About half the hits in this search confuse a record stylus with a record stylist.
The demise of phonograph technologies has rendered the mistake much less common. There is, however, a version of this eggcorn that piggybacks on a more current technology. Tablet and smartphone users sometimes employ a non-inky, non-scratching pen to record marks on the tablet input screen. The device is known as a “stylus” or “stylus pen.” And yes, it is occasionally transformed into “stylist pen.” Examples:
Question on an Apple Forum: “Can I use a stylist pen to draw or write on IPadâ€
Software support forum question: “i recently got a surface pro 2 from jbhifi. In the beginning, the stylist that came with it worked fine however after updating, the stylist stopped working.â€
Heading in eBay ad: “ Stylist pen for all phone and tabletsâ€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I think what annoyed me the most was that this wasn’t some casual user of audio gear, but rather someone who should have known the difference. I suppose I should feel relieved that the error is not his alone. Then there’s the vintage Stylographic pen—part stylus, part style? (The pen has a cameo in the the retro-stlyish movie, “The Age of Innocence.”) Would its user be a “stylist”?
Last edited by bluecrab (2015-09-02 15:37:15)
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