Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I wonder if we can find a better term than “pickled eggcorn.” Maybe we can create an intentional reshaping that could pass for the real thing. Or something with a little more disdain for the ones whose coinings gain widespread popularity among the naive. The term I had in mind was ache-corn because its a blatant reshaping that conveys my disdain.
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Maybe even ache horn.
“Horn” because devils have horns.
“Ache” because their actions cause pain.
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Now that I’ve found and looked over the previous thread that mentions “pickled eggcorns”, I can respond to your suggestion.
I don’t like your term “ache-corn” because, unlike you, I feel no disdain for eggcorns based on naive acceptance of deliberate puns as legitimate phrases. Why would we disdain that type of mistake (or the person making it) any more than the kind of mistake underlying the basic eggcorn process? In fact, does disdain need to come into the picture at all? We all make these little mistakes, and the language is ultimately richer as a result. We wouldn’t have our wonderful Eggcorn Forum without them.
If we must distinguish this type of eggcorn from others, “pickled eggcorn” works better for me because it’s a pun itself and is a metaphor for the extra step in the process of eggcorn formation.
Having said that, I don’t think we need to even concern ourselves with the distinction or with any associated terminology. As someone mentioned in the earlier thread, we have no way of knowing how many of our well-accepted eggcorns may have come about through this “pickling” process (i.e., naive acceptance of puns as serious phrases). Why start a new category when we can’t usually determine whether a particular eggcorn even fits into it? Are we slipping into a kind of taxonomic obsessiveness?
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Haycorns. Because that’s what Pooh and Piglet called them and I can’t be the only person who thought they were right.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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Perhaps we should call these manufactured, processed entities “eggocorns.” Some of us remember the corporate slogan Leggo my eggo.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I missed this conversation 10 years ago, but I came across “little lone” for “let alone” today, and was thinking that “ache horn” would be a good name for reshapings that aren’t acorns because they make no sense, since “ache horn” is a reshaping that makes no sense.
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
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“Ache horn” looks fine on paper (or in pixels), but verbally it’s pretty much indistinguishable from “eggcorn”, thus impractical, so I’d have to vote no on that term.
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