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
My daughter is transcribing some interviews she did as part of her dissertation. One of her interviewees opined “you can catch more bees with honey than with anger.”
The proverb is “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Over the last three decades, however, there has been a significant jump in the alternate (and more biologically correct—many species of flies love vinegar) idiom “you can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.”
The replacement of “vinegar” with “anger” is an eggcornical touch. I can only find four examples of it on the web, two with “bees” and two with “flies:”
Bees:
http://www.palladiumaddict.net/AddictFo … hp?t=39469
http://whitewizardspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/10/anger.html
Flies:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comment … rs_in_the/
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid= … 3221&hl=en
and one, oddly enough, with “bears:”
http://www.autoedms.com/cgibin/ubbcgi/u … 1&t=000076
There are another three web examples of “with honey than anger” that may be allusions to this proverb.
In short, not really established enough to count as a full-blown eggcorn. But one to watch.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
Of course, many here on the Forum who are a bit more demanding than you and I would insist that the pronunciation similarity between “anger” and “vinegar” is insufficient for eggcornicity.
Offline