Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Although the pin/pen confusion has been mentioned in a number of contexts hereon, I don’t think this particular variation has been seen here:
“If you had to pen me down I guess I would say my favorite track on the album would have to be ‘Beast of Burden.’” (from an Amazon music chat forum)
Googling yields a number of examples. Some seem to be mere slips with no hint of eggcornicity, and some may be puns. But some, like the example above, may have enough of a meaning-connection to be eggcorns. Perhaps the writer is thinking of “pen me down” in terms of writing him down on a list of those who take a certain position. It seems likely to be an eggcorn in at least some cases.
And here’s a bonus: In scanning those google pages, I encountered this slip: “Only cow!!!!” (presumably instead of “Holy cow!!!!”) Googling “only cow!” yields nearly 51k hits, but a scan of the first 3 pages shows no examples like this one; instead they’re just out-of-context juxtapositions with no apparent exclamatory intent. Has anyone ever seen/heard this one?
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I hadn’t. I like it. Can you give it to us in its context?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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DavidTuggy wrote:
...I like it. Can you give it to us in its context?
It’s from this page: http://www.twifans.com/profile/grenudo1
which is a page for fans of the adolescent vampire movie “Twilight”. In reference to a picture of the teen heart-throb star of the movie pinning a girl down to bite her neck, one Melissa Brown wrote “Only cow!!!! I need a fan…...he can pen me down any day….”
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Could it be that the writer was thinking of something more like “pen me in,” “pen me in his arms”?
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patschwieterman wrote:
Could it be that the writer was thinking of something more like “pen me in,” “pen me in his arms”?
If you’re referring to the writer of the first example, maybe, but I doubt it.
If, as I suspect, you’re referring to the second example, it’s very unlikely, as it’s a comment on a picture of a guy who’s on top of a girl on a bed. Not only is he pinning her down with his weight, but since her back is pressed into the mattress, it’d be hard for him to get his arms around her.
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