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#1 2021-01-25 14:33:31

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

imic

It’s called a mockingbird because it can imic ― uh ― it can imitate, or mimic, lots of different things

Caught myself saying this blend the other day. You can find it on the Inet, of course:

Nartowng of blood vessels in advanced toxicity can imic retinitis pigmen- tosa and conelrod dystrophy.

(OCR going on, probably, but losing either a leading m or a trailing -tate seem unlikely.)

designing man – made drugs which can imic more precisely what the brain ’ s own tranquilizers do .

Moreover, rather than deny unlawful conduct, Titlecraft admitted that its trophies were intended to ” imic the Vince Lombardi Trophy Design,”

This timeless style imics the unique tones of marble and stone with a color palette of crisp whites, neutral tans and fresh grays.

This imics the behavior in Charybdis, IRCD-Hybrid, InspIRCd 2.2, Plexus 4, etc.

Not a huge number of them, but they are there. It might be somewhat standard for some.
.
It suggests the opposite error (a long instead of a short blend), of course. This one seems to fairly often be purposeful, though of course it might be people taking up an inadvertent blend because it is fun:

mimitate – Urban Dictionary www.urbandictionary.com › define › term=mimitate Back.

Loading… Top definition. mimitate. To mimic and imitate ·

Mimitations The Game of Quick Impressions Vintage Game of Impressions | Swipe Right to Mimitate a selfie or Swipe Left to Pass. You are only shown to the person you Mimitate.

Again there are probably-not-tongue-in-cheek usages as well:

the fact is, it progressively declined from the best modpacks ever to those sad versions of something tha tries to mimitate what it was in it’s prime youthfulness!

Is it reasonable to try to mimitate the data with a Linear model? NO. The scatterplot shows an increasing and concave up ahape.

Full quote: “They do not seek to imitate form, but to create form; not to mimitate life but to find an equivalent for life.

I mean is Sakurai trying to mimitate Halo 3?? this is smash!!! we dont need custom stages!!!...we need our classic stages that we will remember

[citing] www.academia.edu › [that] are difficult to mimitate (1995; 55), such as trust friendship and teamwork are essential components of the production process.

Entertaining, anyhow. One error imics the other.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-01-25 19:51:12)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#2 2021-02-17 11:54:29

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: imic

“Mimitate” seems like a plausible eggcorn.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#3 2021-03-07 04:08:13

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: imic

I really like “mimitate” and I think it’s a great find whether or not it’s a true portmanteau. But I’ve recently noticed a certain class of typo in which people seem to insert an m before words beginning with a vowel. I give some examples of this for the reshaping “mimmigration” below, which is surprisingly easy to find. It turns up in both French and English, and I saw what looked like PDFs of government documents from both Australia and Quebec with the typo. I suspect this is always a typo and doesn’t reflect pronunciation, but I’m betting many more instances of this kind of thing could be found.

Over the years, regulars on this site have spotted all sorts of instances of people inserting r, l, and n within words, and of course this process has historically resulted in words like “messenger” derived from “message.” I hadn’t before noticed many insertions at the beginnings of words, but they might be more common that I had earlier guessed.

Examples:

His passport was seized this month after a summons from Indonesian mimmigration officials, who also threatened him with deportation.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/diplomati … NFAFIIMTA/

Successful applicants and members of their family forming part of their households will be exempt from mimmigration restrictions.
https://www.hipeac.net/jobs/11853/scien … -learning/

With the pressure on the system by illegal immigrants slightly eased, it is hoped that the new law will make it possible for greater legitimate mimmigration.
https://m.economictimes.com/new-uk-law- … om=desktop
[This archived article showed some signs of machine misreadings, which might be pertinent.]

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#4 2021-03-07 04:15:11

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: imic

Serendipitously, I caught myself, on camera this time, coming out again with imic again, at 6:20 of “this video”: youtube.com/watch?v= _ QKbWljDr4g (remove the spaces around the underline). Once again, my immediate ―perp-confessional― awareness was of having both imitate and mimic active in my mind.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-03-08 06:21:34)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#5 2021-03-07 04:35:34

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: imic

Great to hear from you, Pat! You wrote:

I really like “mimitate” and I think it’s a great find whether or not it’s a true portmanteau. But I’ve recently noticed a certain class of typo in which people seem to insert an m before words beginning with a vowel. I give some examples of this for the reshaping “mimmigration” below, which is surprisingly easy to find. It turns up in both French and English,

The insertion of m before Vm (instead of Vt or Vk or Vl or something) is probably not accidental. It looks dittographical or something. I’d bet you could find people saying it too, though of course it would be hard to know whether they’d seen it written independently, or whether the error in one communication mode came before the other and influenced it.

However, I decided, just for kicks, to check for lillegal and millegal , expecting to find the former but not the latter. To my surprise, both exist in the thousands (to whatever extent the google numbers mean anything trustworthy or interpretable), though the former is 30 times more likely to show up than the latter. The first one is of course the expected one if dittography or phonic anticipation is what’s happening, but the existence at all of the latter looks like confirmation of your hypothesis, Pat.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-03-07 04:36:10)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#6 2021-03-08 00:56:44

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: imic

Hi, David!

There’s no end to cataloguing the geography of error!

Your experiment was better than mine, and very intriguing. I think you’re right that anticipation probably accounts for most of this, but I’m wondering whether that group of intrusive liquids and nasals {l.r.m.n} that we’ve seen inserted all over the place inside words might also be showing up at the beginnings of vowel-initial words with a greater frequency than other sounds.

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#7 2021-03-17 13:53:14

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: imic

Geography of error. Nice turn of speech.

This added nasal may fall under the linguistic category of reduplication..


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#8 2021-03-19 08:15:40

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: imic

The term reduplication is usually applied where the mimitation is systematic and especially when it is productive and/or lexical. Nahuatl, the language I have most worked with for analysis, has it all over the place. Usually it takes the form of duplication of a complete syllable rather than a single consonant, but duplicating an m could function in the same way, and especially so when the result is a repeated whole syllable ( mimi ). Its meaning cluster is extremely complex, but the meanings tend to be iconic or to “make sense” naturally (in languages generally and certainly in Nahuatl), being things like repetition, prolongation, intensification, sporadicness, plurality, etc. E.g. the popōka of the volcano name Popocatepetl means to smoke, but especially to send out puffs of smoke or to smoke for an extended period of time; pōka alone is more generally to smoke. If the initial m of mimitate were more systematic I would certainly call it reduplication―it is so, to speak, repetititive .

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-03-19 08:17:33)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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