Eggcorn Forum

Yesterday I commented on a thread in The Free Dictionary Language Forums regarding a Tweet from Donald Trump that read:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
China steals United States Navy research drone
in international waters – rips it out of water
and takes it to China in unpresidented act.
  
Although is was most likely a misspelling (note that the above article’s URL itself misspells “misspell”) coupled with a Freudian slip (and later corrected), someone suggested a malaprop.
I replied:

If thought the writer actually believed the correct word to be unpresidented (which I don’t), it could be an eggcorn.

That prompted this new thread that began:

A new word for me: EGGHORN
Member Eoin Riedy mentioned this word in another thread.
I am very old (“I have more yesterdays than tomorrows”), but I had NEVER heard this word.
I visited Professor Google and found an explanation from the Longview [Texas] News-Journal newspaper.
1. An “egghorn” is “an odd substitution [that] leads to the formation of a new word or phrase that sounds plausible but is somewhat different in meaning.”

After making sure that I hadn’t misspelled “eggcorn” myself, I (hopefully) clarified the word and included a few links the Eggcorn Forum, so perhaps there will be some new traffic here.

Last edited by Eoin (2016-12-21 19:49:58)