Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Today noted an instance of a possible eggcorn: “flown the next,” a sensible deformation implying “moved on to another/the next stage of life,” instead of the original metaphor of the young bird leaving the nest after becoming able to fly. Google coughed up a number of other examples, all involving the past participle “flown.”
An argument against its being an eggcorn is the proximity of X and S on the QWERTY keyboard. The first example suggests a simple misspelling (note the hashtag); other examples come in close proximity to the phrase “empty nest,” etc.
• “My youngest has flown the next loads of love to @AjcrumpCrump and @linzifay89 & wishing you happiness in your new home #emptynestsyndrome”: https://twitter.com/GranAnge/status/498451172664279040
• http://clarasconversationcorner.blogspo … -next.html
• “Consider treating yourself to something special as your graduation gift to look forward to once your child has flown the next for college”; but, in the same article and comments, several references to “empty nest(er)(s)”: http://wemagazineforwomen.com/after-the … is-turned/
• “I felt pretty sad and had a few weeks of doing the mother thing, where you feel like another one of your babies has flown the next. I accepted that he was moving on and have come to terms with the changes.” http://lottisworld-lotti.blogspot.com/2 … month.html
• “We have a lot of children- but now all but one of them has flown the next – three in the US Navy, and one graduating cum laude from Columbia College and going on to work for a company in Denver.” – See more at: http://hbsauthorspotlight.blogspot.com/ … Uc95B.dpuf
• For families who have simply outgrown their space, or those who wish to downsize after their children have flown the next during the course of the assignment must cover the costs of a local move by themselves. http://www.armywifenetwork.com/moving-w … community/
• “It’s mainly those whose children have flown the next and the retired, who are fortunate enough to be able to holiday ‘out of season’.” http://www.birstall.free-online.co.uk/B … P278a.html
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I really like this one. It’s subtle and smooth, but the more I think on it the better it works. The syntactico-semantic shift of the object of fly from being the starting point (origin) to the ending point (destination) of the flying gives a nice jolt to us who hear it as an eggcorn, but fits just fine within the bounds of English usage.
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I did find an example with fly rather than flown ; I expect there are others out there too, but so many legitimate contexts (e.g. fly the next day ) use the same sequence of words that they don’t pop up immediately.
He has been a part of my life for so long it’s like having to see my own children fly the next, it has been a time of high emotion
( Flies the next, flew the next, flying the next would reasonably show up and probably would for David B and other search-geniuses, but a quick raking by me didn’t turn any over.)
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You are right to speculate on other ways the sequence could arise (the fingerslips and wtf misspellings you mention, anticipations and perserverations from context, etc.), but there are enough of these and the semantic connection is so appealing that it does seem probable that at least some of them are/were eggcorns for their users.
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Welcome to the forum, ck!
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2015-12-28 02:51:47)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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