Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Wow, this eggcorn business is fun! I’ve searched the db and found a few goat-related references, but not the above. I spotted it in my favourite forum:
” To have facial hair is seen as a religious sign. Even a goat-T was frowned on.” Quoogle also gives this from a blog: “Two weekends ago, I did something I never thought I would do: I shaved off my Goat-T.”
Does this count as an eggcorn or is it just wrong?
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Figure out a plausible meaning for it if you want to convince us. What does a T have to do with it? The goat connection is already there (I think!).
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I can sort of see the goatee dangling below the moustaches as forming a T, but find it hard to imagine the perpetrators are thinking of that.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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OK, billy-goats have beards. The mouth above a straggly beard on a chin form a T shape? (Struggling here!)
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When it comes to eggcorns, I—and a few others on this forum—are masters of self-deception, so I can easily believe a T-shaped goat-like growth below one’s lower lip being referred to as a Goat-T. (Plus I find it clever and amusing). The only question is whether the utterers intended that imagery unknowingly.
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By the way, as an aside…
George Bernard Shaw once took the letter combination “ghoti” and demonstrated how it could be pronounced “Fish:” The “gh” could have the “f” sound heard in “rough;” The “o” could have the “i” sound heard in “women;” and the “ti” could have the “sh” heard in “nation.” So, when my sixth grade English teacher put up the letters “ghoti” on the board to regurgitate this trite bit of word play, the class thought that this made-up word might be pronounced like “goatee.”
Flash forward to the early 1990s when the goatee was making a resurgence as a fashion statement, it was about the same time that the band Phish had reached the peak of their popularity. In my mind since the band Phish had already used an alternative spelling of “fish” in their name it would have been appropriate if they had named one of their albums “Ghoti”—thereby making a subtle reference to both GBS and the fashion trend. But alas, they didn’t.
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jorkel wrote:
When it comes to eggcorns, I—and a few others on this forum—are masters of self-deception, so I can easily believe a T-shaped goat-like growth below one’s lower lip being referred to as a Goat-T. (Plus I find it clever and amusing). The only question is whether the utterers intended that imagery unknowingly.
“Unknowingly†here meaning “not knowing that it is not standardâ€, not “not knowing that they intended itâ€.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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jorkel wrote:
By the way, as an aside… George Bernard Shaw once took the letter combination “ghoti” and demonstrated how it could be pronounced “Fish:” The “gh” could have the “f” sound heard in “rough;” The “o” could have the “i” sound heard in “women;” and the “ti” could have the “sh” heard in “nation.” So, when my sixth grade English teacher put up the letters “ghoti” on the board to regurgitate this trite bit of word play, the class thought that this made-up word might be pronounced like “goatee.”
Saw another riffed on ghoti recently (posted, if not actually authored, by one Alexander Stiefelmann): “gh as in night, o as in people, t as in gourmet and i as in business.â€
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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DavidTuggy wrote:
Saw another riffed on ghoti recently (posted, if not actually authored, by one Alexander Stiefelmann): “gh as in night, o as in people, t as in gourmet and i as in business.â€
A useful pronunciation for those who have taken a vow of silence.
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