Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
The good news: With World Cup Socker moving into its final rounds, a football eggcorn.
The bad news: This eggcorn is a fruit of the other football–the football that most Murrikunz know by that name. In this game, a ball in play that is dropped is a fumble. Players scramble to recover the ball for their team.
Turning “fumble†into “fumball,†as dozens of web writers do, is a word fumball. Some examples:
Comment on a chess (yes) forum: “Leon Lett started a premature touchdown celebration afer returning a fumball about 50 yards.â€
On a forum discussing a football team: “No, no holding when going after a fumball....â€
Sports forum: “[A] holding call that never happened cannot be a mistake, and a call involving a knee down before a fumball also cannot be a mistake.â€
A few sites use “fumball†deliberately, as a pun. Other sites seem to call certain ball games “fumball.â€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Thumps up! Very good one.
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Can we identify fum ? Could be nasal assimilation from fun , I suppose, but the meaning doesn’t fit too well. Though I suppose it is fun for the other team, especially if they recover the ball. Fee fi fo fum ? Probably not. Some form of fume ? (Fumbling the ball is often cause for fuming by the team and individual responsible.)
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At least (I think) there is some of the “sound-symbolic†or “phonaesthetic†stuff we’ve talked about so often: fum just sounds clum sy (fucked up fubar foul (ball), flustered frustrated; stumble bumble dumb numb …).
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Have we had other – ble / ball pairs? It’d be fun to make some up if we haven’t.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Have we had other – ble / ball pairs? It’d be fun to make some up if we haven’t.
Columbus thought the spherical globe was circumnavigaball.
Notes in the treball clef are round.
A ball inbounds is playaball.
A smiley is a symball.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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It seems there a game called Thumball, a “soccer-style ball” described as “a serious tool for learning,” and it has over 500 ughits. It is possible that thumballs could account for some of Kem’s fumballs if those using the term had been introduced to it by folk who sound ‘th’ as ‘f.’ This may seem a little far-fetched, but look what can happen to ‘thimble:’
There is Smirnoff available which I asked for one evening but nearly fainted when they charged me £6.50 for a tiny shot measured in a fimble sized meaure. ...
I must have forgot that one Jamie although only being 6 inches tall it only takes a fimble of Beer to get me drunk. ...
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There is also “marball” from the database: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/222/marball/
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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