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
“This is entertainment for grown harts” – from an IMDB user review of “Jack Goes Boating.”
The image of the audience is priceless. I am resisting further wordplay. The same review also contains “payed off,” of no special significance other than it lends credence to my belief that “hart” is not simply a keyboarding error.
Offline
I am sorry—I don’t get it.
.
(1) What phrase would you normally have expected here? (I.e., what is the acorn?) “Entertainment for grown hearts†sounds pretty strange to me.
.
(2) If the eggcorn involves a reference to adult male deer (“Oh deer, my hartâ€), how does that make sense? If not, what does it mean?
.
(3) The presence of ‘payed off’ doesn’t seem to me to support at all strongly the notion that ‘hart’ is not simply a keyboarding error (though it may slightly up the probability of it being some other kind of error). In any case:
.
(4) so what? There are other kinds of errors it could be. If, as seems likely, it is an ignorant misspelling (i.e. if the perpetrator simply thinks hart is the correct spelling for the word meaning HEART) that does not an eggcorn make. (Agreed, it evokes some entertaining imagery.)
.
Am I missing something here? (It’s quite possible, even to the point of being likely :-) )
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-11-19 22:34:35)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline
I was just bewitched and bewildered, I guess, by the image of “adult harts” (ignoring the redundancy) being entertained by the movie – and by the various relationships possible among hart/heart/dear/deer. I probably shouldn’t have bothered with it. I don’t think you missed anything.
Offline
It’s worth bothering with, and certainly enjoyable, as you say. It would fit better in the “Slips, Innovations and Reshapings†section, though.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline