Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Used (accidentally) by a teenage girl to describe objectionable attention-seeking behavior of a teenage boy. I think it’s a lovely innovation, but could it be an eggcorn?
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It’s a popular joke, as you can see from this t-shirt sold by a stand-up comic: http://karlfromnh.com/store.html . Jokes are not usually eggcorns, but when they hang around long enough to become standard usage, they may turn themselves into eggcorns for certain speakers. See further comments on jokes vs eggcorns here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=4031
Last edited by kem (2009-12-09 17:08:04)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Did you witness this yourself, Nora? Did the girl realize she’d said something wrong (blush, etc.)? For it to be an eggcorn (a) this should be standard for her, (b) she should think other people pronounce and understand it in the same way, (c) that way should include reference to the testicles (male hormones, etc.) as part of the meaning.
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All three of these criteria might be met more easily, if, as Kem suggests, she learned the jocular form of the word as standard. It is also possible, of course, that she came up with it independently (accidentally, as you say, or with malice of forethought, or innocently but sincerely). In any case, it is funny.
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(And, welcome to the forum!)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-12-09 18:43:05)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Her parents heard her say it, and mom told me today that her daughter seemed to think that was the way the word was supposed to sound, and that its meaning clearly had something to do with adolescent male behavior and somehow therefore the testicle. Her parents, thinking the kid was making a great joke, laughed really hard. When they explained what was so funny, unfortunately, they realized they had completely embarrassed the poor kid, who will not discuss it further at the moment. The word is quickly, according to mom, becoming family jargon.
My google-fu is obviously out of whack, though, as I only searched for the word in language-y groups, not comedy t-shirts. Thanks for the quick responses! Most of the time when I encounter these things I find them already listed here.
Last edited by Nora (2009-12-09 20:54:07)
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Becoming family jargon is a natural (and at least in my family a common) way for these things to become standard. We use one we like over and over again, and younger members of the family can easily learn the “wrong†version as standard.
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One of the fun things about this forum is that you can drop little oddities in, like I did with “malice of forethought†above, and be pretty sure that the other forumers will pick up on the oddity and enjoy it. Usually they will remember that it was Ken or Joe or Pat that first reported it years ago, or something profound that Kem said in response to it. That kind of rich response you don’t get in every context.
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My sister heard a preacher, praying in church, saying, “Oh, Lord, there are so many wonderful adverbs that we could describe to You, to let You know Who You are!†She could hardly contain her mirth, but as far as she could see (peeking during the prayer, of course) no one else was affected at all. Those who aren’t aware of this sort of thing are often, simply, not aware. (No disparaty intended: people like us are weird and the others are normal.)
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(fwiw “disparaty†was intended as a sort of blend between disparagement —which fits the meaning— and disparity —which doesn’t, quite the contrary in fact. Doubtless also influenced in my mind by the Spanish word disparate ‘absurdity, nonsense. over-the-top ridiculosity’. But I don’t have it documented as a non-intentional error. Bet it’s out there, though!)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-12-10 08:52:57)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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(Picking up the conversation almost 10 years later:)
There are a lot of them on the Internet now.
Because the disparaty in shadows existed, he knew that either the world was flat and the sun close, or the world was round and the sun far.
Turned into hate, racial disparaty, nationalism and nativism. Humanitarian crisis turned into a political absurd arena.
would it be because of the financial disparaty. between the haves and have nots?
I do want to bring to everyone’s attention that Canada’s med schools are on par with each other, while the US has a greater disparaty in doctor quality
And plenty more.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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There are also many, many examples of “despairity” on the web. A few are puns. Several are coinages meaning “state/condition of despair.” But many are misspellings of “disparity.” Perhaps some of these mispellings are influenced by “despair,” which would make them an eggcorn of a sort.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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