Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
I unsulted her and all of her family
Is there anybody here who thinks the OP had the intention to unsult or disparage any group of people? Why is he being accused of the equivalent of a hate crime?
He tried to unsult me but i defended myself and slash beat him out of the ball-park with an amazing reply.
And don’t be rude, unsulting, complaining and all the bad things. Be nice and we will have no problems.
Ran across this one and am rolling it over in my mind. There are a lot of them on the Inet. Surprisingly many of those are purposeful, one way or another. (Trying to be clever: ‘an insult that doesn’t sound like one’; a UN-sult to the UN, etc.) But some don’t seem to be. They could be ignorant echoes of a purposeful one, in some cases.
.
It could just be a typo in some cases. i and u are next to each other on the qwertyboard.
.
But there are so many “bad things†(as the last example suggests) which begin with un – , many of which overlap with insulting: _(being) unappreciative/uncaring/uncooperative/uncomplimentary/uncouth/, underestimating/undermining, undoing/unravelling a person’s self-esteem in an unseemly manner_ etc. I keep wondering if this isn’t an eggcornlike perception by some of the negative prefix un – as part of the word. Perhaps as a substitute for the also misperceived negative prefix in – ??
.
It would be a slightly easier switch phonologically for people who pronounce the word with stress on the second syllable ( inSULT rather than INsult .) Don’t know too many of those, though.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-03-19 20:43:28)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
David,
In your last comment, about the stress, you seem to be thinking of the noun, but your examples were of the verb, where the pronunciation is inSULT.
Bruce
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
Offline
Maybe for y’all all, but not for usn’s. I have that stress-switching pattern on lots of other noun-verb pairs (e.g. PERmit n. vs. perMIT v.), but I INsult people, not inSULT them.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
You seem jokingly to imply that the stress-switching thing is a Southern feature—is it?
Offline
Not by any means only Southern. But there is regional variation as to which words undergo it. I do have a vague impression that my exemption of insult from the pattern is something I picked up from Southerners. Conceivably it arises from a slightly eggcornish reanalysis of the verb as derived from the noun: i.e. to insult is to give an insult to much as to crown is to place a crown on or to pepper is to put pepper on.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline