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
My student writes, ”...[H]e could not file any lawsuits because the web site was not hailed responsible.”
It’s possible her Southern accent gave her “hailed” for “held” ( like the “For Sell” signs you see around here), but it’s also possible that the sense of being called to or commanded ( as in “hail a cab”) is at work here. Is it an eggcorn? Hail, yes!
Offline
Works for me.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
her Southern accent gave her “hailed†for “heldâ€
Yes, I used to hear southern preachers on the radio warning that sinners were in danger of “going to hail.†I wondered if they had read Dante’s Inferno-his hell was cold, with a frozen lake at the center. (The Latin source of “inferno,” infernus, is based on infer, a word for “below,” with no temperature implied. Hell has been described at both extremes of the thermometer, though the high temp version seems to have been more popular, over the centuries, than the low temp one. About the only thing we know for sure is that the place is not look warm.)
A few minutes later. I just had a thought. Do you suppose that “cold as hail” could be an eggcorn in the U. S. South? There are at least four examples on the web of “cold as hail outside” and another half dozen under “as cold as hail.”
Last edited by kem (2010-04-08 22:19:55)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
I see that “death nail” has been chronicled already but another along the the same lines is “tears wailing up”.
You’ve got a name for everything; have you got one for these Southland-sounding eggcorns? Aigcorns?
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
Offline