Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
The Eggcorn Forum and the Eggcorn Database are currently in the process of being converted into static sites.
Once the conversion is complete, all existing posts are expected to still be accessible at their original URLs. However, no new posts will be possible.
Feel free to comment on the relevant forum threads.
Chris -- 2025-05-10
Overstepping the mark suggests behaving in an inappropriate manner and deliberately offending an established and accepted social convention, but to oversleep a mark seems more an offence of mere neglect or carelessness. Still, I feel an element of eggcornishness must surely be afoot.
...they overslept the mark of complicated phonetic encoding being exhausted, hence the dissociation with politics, the apathy of the former lusts for war …
These lame excuses and cover ups for the fact that a British prince overslept the mark when he got mixed up in dirty games with a very promiscuous American actress with a very checkered past have gone on for far too long now.
Yep, local vigilantes did something similar with pliers when the local theaving heroin addicts overslept the mark.
Offline
Might the notion of slipping past the mark be active in there somewhere? (I.e. someone overslipped the mark ?)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2023-12-20 09:15:02)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
Seems like an obvious confusion. I’m surprised there is not more evidence of it on the web.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
Re overslipping the mark, there might be an example from 1859 here . Also over a century ago:
Sir F. Fremantle.
No, I have already explained what the position is; but, as I was saying, I think it is quite natural that the administration may from time to time overslip the mark at the end of the 12 months, and in such cases it is advisable to allow the further month.
Brome grass is difficult to eradicate, but surely your correspondent overslips the mark when he stigmatizes it as “that (almost) worst of all noxious weeds.”
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
David—I found a couple more examples online of “overslipped the mark,” one from a Delaware newspaper in 1917 and another one from (apparently) transcription of debate in the British Parliament in 1938. I wonder if this was an older, then-standard usage that has quietly faded away over the last century. If it weren’t so far past bedtime, I’d try checking the OED for “to overslip.”
In any case, I enjoyed your final example. I think this would be a better world if it had more people ready to step up and defend the honor of brome grass.
Offline