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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
In an Associated Press article published today ranking the fifty United States according to their “happiness ratings,” I found a puzzling phrase which I believe is an eggcorn.
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Here is the story: http://www.starbulletin.com/news/200912 … _folk.html
Whether the person has misspoke depends on what the prophecy is, doesn’t it? If the prophecy in question is the prediction made by mobile people that states such as New York and California would be good places to live, and every mobile person moves there for that reason, then the prophecy is, as the article says, not fulfilled—because of overcrowding, these places turn out not to be good places to live for the ones who made the prophecy.
If, on the other hand, the prophecy is the social analyst’s prediction that too many people, people who think that these are good states in which to live, will move into these states and thus make them bad places to live, then the prophecy is turns out to be true, and it is also self-fulfilling, since the analyst who made the prediction didn’t have to do anything to make it happen.
I think the first prophecy is what the author of the article had in mind.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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