Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Of course, ‘streaks ahead’ is fine as a verb phrase on its own, so we need to add a bit of extra grammar to see the eggcorn: Google shows about 95 000 hits for “is streaks ahead”. For example:
Rafa Nadal is streaks ahead of everyone in the game at this current moment in time.
“Financial services is streaks ahead,” said Dave Martin, lead security consultant at LogicaCMG.
Bavaria is clearly Germany’s top destination for conventions and conferences and is streaks ahead of the other states when it comes to MICE events.
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Interesting find, Oikolukija. I’d never heard of being “streets ahead” and so at first I couldn’t tell eggcorn from acorn. A bit of poking around showed that it’s a British expression also used widely in Australia, apparently, and now streaking into NA culture. There is at least one folk-etymological story available on the web, and one apparently independently confirmed origin, as an expression from cribbage. “Streaks ahead” is a cute, imaginative eggcorn for “streets ahead”.
One of the early posts on the latter wordsmith link wondered whether “streets ahead” might not have evolved from “streaks ahead”. And another poster struggles to define, I think, the Lehmann’s term way back in 2000:
There’s got to be a special name for a mishearing like this that results in what would be an eponym if it weren’t a mishearing. I think mondegreen should be reserved for this meaning and something else be used for ordinary mishearings like “Scuse me while I kiss this guy”.
Edit: Oikolukija, huh? Many of the illustrious posters on this forum have been proof readers.
Last edited by David Bird (2010-06-29 18:33:23)
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