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 found in this a paper by an African colleague (which gave it a certain poignancy):
“When asked why there is a high rate of rural-urban migration, especially among the young people, the response was that there are no white colour jobs in the rural areas.”
Since then I’ve discovered many more on Google: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22white+color+jobs%22
Offline
Beautiful eggcorn, Lathos. I hadn’t seen this one before, though Ken Lakritz posted a related phrase back in 2005: white color criminals. “White color jobs” is just too good.
Offline
It’d be an excellent eggcorn if somebody could explain so many hits for “blue color jobs”. The colour of the work-clothes?
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
Offline
It’d be an excellent eggcorn if somebody could explain so many hits for “blue color jobsâ€. The colour of the work-clothes?
I didn’t know until I saw your question that “blue-collar/white-collar” are chiefly American terms. Yes, the predominant color of the work-shirts for manual and industrial workers on the one hand (blue) and for office-workers on the other (white) gave rise to the blue-collar/white-collar distinction.
Offline
Ha, interesting, thanks Pat, I wouldn’t have guessed that it wasn’t global. You have to wonder a bit when you see both in the same sentence, however. Maybe the presence of the words “white” and “blue” induce the fingers to write “color” in some cases, like mental watercolours. That would make them WTF typos. In its defence, there’s no indication that it refers to the skin colour of the purple trader. Switching the metonym from collar makes an eggcorn of a different color*.
Whites usually commit white collar crime whereas poor blacks commit blue color crime.
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/memphis … O4MERK1I0A
A guy tells me he can get me a big house for 20K and I trust him and give the money to him. Next day another guy beats me up and robs the 20K I had. Should both of these criminals fall under same category? I guess the difference boils down to white collar crime and blue color crime.
http://sajha.org/sajha/html/openthread. … adid=83562
* Canadians are allowed by multilateral entente to switch freely between British and American usage. Indeed, many words exist in the Canadian psyche (mine in any case) in a kind of schrodingerian superposition of wave states that will collapse randomly and utterly unpredictably, a bit like U235.
Offline
Delicate matters: I was familiar with the term but I thought that the hits for ‘blue color workers’ made it clear that there was no link to skin colour. Perhaps there never was a suggestion that there was such a link. The reference to an African colleague may have influenced me, along with the mention of caucasians in the linked-to post. It’s a good eggcorn when the whole shirt is being talked about rather than just the collar, even though it’s basically the same image, but it’d be more interesting still if there was proof that, perhaps for pronunciation reasons, anyone had made the mental leap to skin-colour on hearing ‘white collar workers’. I apologise for jumping to conclusions, if that’s what I did.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
Offline
I thought this looked familiar, but had a little difficulty finding my original post from early 2007:
blue color workers – 860 ghits
blue colour workers – 97 ghits
Since blue is the colour of the collar in question it may be that some people think that ‘color’ or ‘colour’ is meant rather than collar – that they can’t all be mis-spellings seems clear from the BrEnglish ‘colour’ citations.Records of annual health examinations were reviewed, and those of 3553 blue-color workers and 1860 white-color workers were used for analyses. ... www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi? … t=AbstractNot only blue color workers, but also white color workers should be employed. Some observers may say that such a labor policy will take away Korean worker www.koreafocus.or.kr/main_view.asp?volu … ode=101282 – 32k – CachedThe author randomly assigns exercise routines to blue-color workers, white-color workers, swimmers, boxers, wrestlers, ...etc without any compelling … www.amazon.ca/Getting-Stronger-Training … 0679732691 – 61k – Cached… the world partly because of the strong yen and partly due to the relatively small gap in incomes between white colour workers and blue colour workers. ...
I didn’t know until I saw your question that “blue-collar/white-collar†are chiefly American terms.
I’m surprised to learn that they’re chiefly American since they’re commonly used and understood over here.
Offline