Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
people like eating jelly deals (jellied eels)
Last edited by mikew (2010-09-17 09:42:18)
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Welcome to the forum, mikew.
“Jelly Deal” for “jellied eel” fits the eggcorn pattern. Thanks for contributing it.
The Internet is ripe with confessions of this error. I can’t find an example that looks like someone actually making this error, though. The examples given below seem to be a series of one-off mishearings that were eventually corrected. Many on this forum believe that the best eggcorns become, for a time (and occasionally for all time), standard usages for language communities.
Discussion board of The Guardian: “Meanwhile Rhodri Burridge has this: “This is one of my wife’s – she thought jellied eels were jelly deals. ”
UK forum: “Some cockney thing like Jellied Eels? I used to think that was Jelly Deals...â€
Music site post: “First time I heard of jellied eels was on Only Fools and Horses, only I thought they were saying ” Jelly deals ”. I thought it was some hip name for a dessert with jelly. Seriously – not kidding. I was slightly surprised when someone explained this to me.â€
Home repair forum: “My missus always wondered what ’ Jelly deals ’ were. She genuinely thought they were a type of sweet not sold in Scotland.â€
Last edited by kem (2010-12-19 15:11:46)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I had a professor years ago that often used the phrase “It makes a grade eel of difference …â€. Others have reported it: the book A Distant Trumpet , by Paul Horgan, has a character that uses the phrase. It’s more a mondegreen than an eggcorn: I’m sure the perps were not thinking of high-class eels, but I for one couldn’t hear the phrase without thinking of them.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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