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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I was surprised when reading a reddit forum to see someone use the term, “Wallow Talkie,” so I Googled it and to my surprise I came up with quite a few hits.
Here is the reddit link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comm … e/dfx5rn5/
“At this point someone gets on the wallow talkie, our supervisor comes over, gets between mom and daughter and escorts the woman away.”
Here is a hit on a comment on an Amazon Walkie Talkie product:
https://www.amazon.com/Walkie-Talkie-12 … B00B1XY7M2
The top comment currently contains the following line:
” I contacted the company and they were supposed to send out replacements but it’s been two months of my son asking every day if his wallow talkies are here and still nothing.”
On Ebay, there is an ad for a wallow talkie:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/motorola-radius … 2220366265
“motorola radius p200 Two Way Radio Wallow Talkie For Parts Or Repair”
Here’s an ad on Varage Sale:
https://www.varagesale.com/fremont-cali … -brand-new
“Swat costume for toddler hat and toy wallow talkie included ! Brand new”
I had never heard this eggcorn before and wondered if it was a legitimate product. At this point, I don’t think so.
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I doubt it’s an eggcorn, as I can’t think of any plausible meaning connection between “wallow” and “walkie” and the pronunciation is very dissimilar. It’s just a puzzling substitution, as far as I can see. I share your mystification as to the commonness of the term “wallow talkie”. Where could it have come from? A strange one.
Welcome to the Eggcorn Forum, drphilosopher!
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It just occurred to me that “wallow” for “walkie” could be a silicism, a substitution caused by computer technology—in this case, spellcheck or autocorrect.
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Dixon Wragg wrote:
It just occurred to me that “wallow” for “walkie” could be a silicism, a substitution caused by computer technology—in this case, spellcheck or autocorrect.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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DavidTuggy wrote:
That explanation works best when a plausible misspelling typed in could be plausibly supposed by the computer to be the word that ends up used. Would the human perp have typed “wallkie” or something like that? I don’t quite see it.
You don’t think anyone would ever accidentally double the “l” in “walkie”, or you don’t think that the computer program would suggest “wallow” as a correction for that? If the latter, what word(s) do you think the computer program would be more likely to suggest than “wallow”?
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The only program I tried it on (M Word) suggested “walkieâ€, but yeah, I guess another computer program could do it. Both k and i are next to o, and e is next to w, if it’s a really sophisticated program but doesn’t know walkie. Or maybe they would have written “wallieâ€. Sure, it might be the right answer.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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