Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
From a recent blog post at:
http://eventingnation.com/home/2010/09/ … art-2.html
“Did you say ‘psychocross’?”
This is the response I get when I invite a friend to come along with me to the race. With competition just hours away, instinct kicks in and I’m scrambling for a groom. Otherwise, who’s going to pin my number on or hold my bike when I have to use the portaloo?
“Cyclocross. You ride your bike around a muddy field and sometimes have to get off and carry it over stuff.” On second thought, maybe ‘psychocross’ was a serviceable description.
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It’s hard to see if this shows up as an accepted variant on the internet, since it’s apparently used as an event name extremely frequently.
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Does it really disqualify a term from being considered an eggcorn if the term is SO perfect that people run with it to describe the underlying term?
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The issue is whether the reshaping was unintentional for a certain number of individuals. It’s apparent that the term “Cyclocross” was the original and that some would gain amusement by intentionally calling it “psychocross,” so those instances would be puns, not eggcorns. Furthermore, we would hope that none of the naive hearers arrived at the reshaping by this route: by overhearing someone else’s pun. It’s conceivable that some would hear the term “Cyclocross” and observe the wild enthusiasm and believe the true term to be “psycho-cross.” Those would be eggcorns … as long as we can justify the imagery of the reshaping well enough (and any other considerations).
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Jorkel, in the example I posted, the person was new to the sport and describing it to her friends, who knew nothing about the sport. So their eggcorn of psychocross was not due to using the term as a pun. You may want to read the blog entry (which I included in my initial post) to get the entire context.
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One of the more sobering parts of our journey to the Eggcorn Omega arrives when we learn that some of the eggcorns we come across are too good. They start out, we think, as inadvertent errors in a restricted community. Then they get picked up by a wider group of speakers who use them as intentional puns, sometimes even as brand names. Eventually the false reality of the pun obscures the natal event. “Oldtimer’s disease” is a typical example.
The citation we started with in this thread comes from a piece of creative writing. Creative writers create. They don’t always respect the standards of veracity that are required in courtrooms. It is possible that the fellow who wrote the article took a pun/brand name and turned it into an anecdote.
But keep looking. We may confessions (though even these are sometimes faked for the sake of a good story) or early examples (Google Books can be useful) that precede the popularity of the pun. “Psychocross” could be a great eggcorn. I’d like to believe.
Last edited by kem (2010-12-19 17:45:29)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Kem, does this mean that Oldtimer’s disease will be removed from the eggcorn database?
Google finds a citation for psychocross in 1996:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/USAToday/ac … atl=google
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bpsych … CDAQzQEwAA
Quoting from the Google cache page:
Dec 20, 1996 – Perfect for a sport whose adherents affectionately call itpsychocross. The sport began in Europe in the 1920s when bicycle racers were looking for a way to stay in shape during the soggy winter months Because the roads were too dangerous to ride on they set up race courses in the woods …
From Mud’s just right for cyclocross Smooth rise in Mass. race wouldn’t be par … – Related web pages
pqasb.pqarchiver.com/USAToday/access/72663026 …
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Kem, does this mean that Oldtimer’s disease will be removed from the eggcorn database?
The Old Timer’s entry is probably secure. When I first stumbled on this site, I was pretty skeptical of that particular article. It turns out, however, that it’s easy to find online confessions from people who once thought the term was “Old Timer’s,” and plenty of other notes by people saying they’ve heard the reshaping used in all innocence. If anyone can find similar evidence for “psychocross,” I imagine it’ll be accepted as a legitimate eggcorn, too. Personally, I think the number of eggcorns that start life as puns and then “go feral” is pretty small.
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I think the number of eggcorns that start life as puns and then “go feral†is pretty small.
Perhaps. It’s the ones that start as eggcorns and get pickled in puns that I find frustrating. We feel there is a real eggcorn there, but can’t prove it. People start remembering mistakes they never made.
whose adherents affectionately call it psychocross
Looks like a deliberate reshaping is in view.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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