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#1 2010-01-08 08:41:32

klakritz
Eggcornista
From: Winchester Massachusetts
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 674

Anti-Lehmans

Annie Lehmans are a subvariety of eggcorn in which a proper name is heard where none is intended. For want of a better term, I propose ‘Anti-Lehman’ for instances of the converse phenomenon, i.e., the misconstrual of proper nouns or adjectives as common nouns or adjectives.

The concept is sitting out there in logical space but whether or not it’s populated is an independent question. And, to answer my own question, I think Anti-Lehmans are pretty common.

Just scanning the database, I see

1)know (someone) from atom
2)old timer’s disease
3)handsome cab
4)halter monitor
5)giga counter
6)grow like top seed
7)sand hill

Here are a few more:

1) Serious chesplayers are assigned an ‘Elo rating’ as a measure of their competitive strength. Many people assume ‘Elo’ is an acronym; I’ve even heard it pronounced ‘Ee-el-oh.’ In fact, the Elo rating is named after its inventor, Prof. Arpad Elo.

2) The Roswell Park Institute is a biomedical research establishmnet in upstate New York. Contrary to appearance, it got its name not because it sits next to a green urban oasis but, rather, to commemorate a man named ‘Roswell Park.’

3) An ‘Outer Bridge’ crosses the waterway separating Staten Isand from New Jersy. However, it’s really the ‘Outerbridge Crossing,’ designed by a civil engineer named “Outerbridge.’

4) The Noble Prizes.

Last edited by klakritz (2010-01-16 22:38:02)

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#2 2010-01-09 21:16:33

jorkel
Eggcornista
Registered: 2006-08-08
Posts: 1456

Re: Anti-Lehmans

Not sure that anyone has ever mistaken a Bengal tiger for a bangle tiger

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#3 2010-01-10 00:48:05

klakritz
Eggcornista
From: Winchester Massachusetts
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 674

Re: Anti-Lehmans

And ‘touring machine’ for ‘Turing machine.’

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#4 2010-01-10 09:32:46

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: Anti-Lehmans

Joe, “bangle tigers” is a classic eggcorn for the ages and should really have its own thread, don’t you think?

Here’s a companion for the old-timers: crone’s disease. The serious auto-immune disorder Crohn’s disease was named after American gastroenterologist Burrill Bernard Crohn. There are two main ages of onset: teens to twenties, and then fifties to seventies.

Jasmine has crone’s disease and has dealt with it all her life.
(http://www.onefemalecanuck.com/2009/06/ … as-of.html)

We all know someone with irritable bowel syndrome, crone’s disease, diverticulitis, or any one of a dozen other disorders.
(http://stanford.wellsphere.com/healthy- … etc/681128)

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#5 2010-01-10 11:25:00

klakritz
Eggcornista
From: Winchester Massachusetts
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 674

Re: Anti-Lehmans

‘Cook’s Tour,’meaning a rapid trip that superficially covers a lot of territory, is said, by the dictionaries, to be named after the British travel agent Thomas Cook. That original meaning persists, but there’s now a secondary Anti-Lehman meaning too:

A Cook’s Tour in Provence … It is the first evening of chef Carole Peck’s Culinary Tour of Provence, a week of unapologetic indulgence and unexpected …
www.carolepeck.com/Tours/acookstourinproven/

A Cook’s Tour, Arizona Style. Learn the art of Arizona cooking! ... Owner/chef Frank Branham hosts weekly cooking classes and wine tastings at his charming …
www.arizonaguide.com › Arizona Feature Articles

David, founder and owner of A Cook’s Tour, escorts a number of tours each year. ... and serves as executive chef of two of Oaxaca’s leading restaurants. ...
www.acookstour.com/ourstaff.shtml

to learn about cooking, chef’s secrets, or organic farming’. PROFILES. At last, a real cook’s tour.
www.oceanareserve.com/uploads/1235552035.pdf

A non-cook on a cook’s tour in Italy ….
travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-cook27jun27

Last edited by klakritz (2010-01-16 22:39:41)

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#6 2010-01-10 20:53:04

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: Anti-Lehmans

I’ve been thinking about the term “anti-Lehmann” (Aunty Lehmann?) for these common but illicit deproperizations of nouns. The term is a fun twist on “Annie Lehmann.” The “anti-“ implies that these terms are the product of a semantic machine that runs in the opposite direction from Annie Lehmanns. And this is exactly what happens with these eggcorns, isn’t it? Instead of taking in common nouns and spitting out proper names, the machine takes in proper names and spits out common nouns.

My only hesitation about the term is a small quibble about which direction is forward and which direction is reverse in this machine. The license given by English to substitute a proper name for a common noun is given out grudgingly. Annie Lehmanns are, as a consequence, relatively rare. In contrast, English liberally promotes the conversion of proper nouns into common nouns. With a little work we will turn up, I suspect, a good many Aunties, Since, then, Annie is an Aunty most of the time, it seems a little odd to have the forward lever on the machine labelled with the reverse-sounding “anti-Lehmann.”

Now that I think about it, this is a really small quibble, almost on the level of arguing which shoe one should put on first. I’m ready to add “anti-/Aunty Lehmann” to our growing list of technical terms for eggcorn events.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#7 2010-01-11 19:21:06

jorkel
Eggcornista
Registered: 2006-08-08
Posts: 1456

Re: Anti-Lehmans

Sure… bangle tigers. Some 600 google hits—not an exceptional number.
Clearly the word “bangle” is more widely known than “Bengal,” so utterers
would have no reason to suspect that “bangle” is incorrect. Not sure that
there is any imagery to be had. Perhaps the notion that these tigers have
physical features that resemble bangles.

Example:

Animal mailboxes, frog mailbox, gorilla mailbox, monkey mailbox …Item# 1126 White Bangle Tiger mailbox…$135.00. This mailbox was for a LSU fan. Your order will not have the LSU in the middle …
www.deanscustommailboxes.com/Wildanimals.html · Cached page

Aside from that, Aunty Lehmann is a very fine term.

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#8 2010-01-18 22:30:18

klakritz
Eggcornista
From: Winchester Massachusetts
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 674

Re: Anti-Lehmans

One more. Bain Capital is a large, Boston-based venture capital group with an unsavory reputation for buying weak companies and repairing the balance sheet by firing lots of workers. The alternate spelling of their name- which looks like something out of Dickens- is grimly appropriate. 1200 ghits:

... 35 years of increasing profits until Consolidated Stores (the people who owned Big Lots) sold them off to Bane Capital Management… three years later, ...
consumerist.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view…id…

Bane Capital owns both companies. They also own everything else in this world pretty much.
www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?p=15393231

...because the venture capitalist of Bane Capital Inc. specializes in finding ways to take your money …
fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/687259.aspx

After all, prior to becoming Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney ran Bane Capital—a firm specializing in turning around failing companies.
townhall.com/blog/g/a2d11314-ffc8-4c13-9dd4-d2047e06adbb

Boston-based Bane Capital LLC is buying the North American phosphates unit of Rhodia SA, France’s biggest specialty chemicals maker, for $550 million.
www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2004 … ily42.html

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#9 2010-10-27 22:41:57

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: Anti-Lehmans

jorkel wrote:

Sure… bangle tigers. Some 600 google hits—not an exceptional number.
Clearly the word “bangle” is more widely known than “Bengal,” so utterers
would have no reason to suspect that “bangle” is incorrect. Not sure that
there is any imagery to be had. Perhaps the notion that these tigers have
physical features that resemble bangles.

Here’s an example I just stumbled upon, on a cryptozoology website: “Eventually animal control caught it; it was a juvanile bangle tiger that was believed to have been someones illegal exotic pet…”

Eggcorn? Probably not, due to lack of a meaning connection. Amusing? I think so.

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#10 2010-12-21 11:47:54

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: Anti-Lehmans

What about transformations represented by names like “Bernie Madoff?” Hundreds think, with some justification, that the man’s name is Bernie Madeoff. Would this be an Aunty Lehman? The surname has not been transformed into a full common noun, as it has in the Aunty Lehman examples mentioned above. Instead, the semantics of a similar common noun have been read back into the spelling of a name.

We have seen this phenomenon before in our discussions of “Mr. Grabgrind/Gradegrind,” “Pokeman,” and “Burden’s Ass.”


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#11 2010-12-22 03:43:31

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: Anti-Lehmans

kem wrote:

What about transformations represented by names like “Bernie Madoff?” Hundreds think, with some justification, that the man’s name is Bernie Madeoff. Would this be an Aunty Lehman? The surname has not been transformed into a full common noun, as it has in the Aunty Lehman examples mentioned above. Instead, the semantics of a similar common noun have been read back into the spelling of a name.

Your spelling it “Aunty Lehman” confused me a bit. I think I prefer “Anti-Lehman” because of the meaning and because the word “aunty” is not a homonym for “anti” in all dialects (as you probably know, “aunt” rhymes with “flaunt” to many folks).

Since klakritz defined Anti-Lehman as ”...the misconstrual of proper nouns or adjectives as common nouns or adjectives”, “Madeoff” wouldn’t qualify as one, since the proper name Madoff is here misconstrued as a verb phrase, not a noun or adjective. But since this misconstrual is really the same process whether the result is a noun, adjective or other part of speech, I propose that the definition of Anti-Lehman be broadened to include misconstruals which yield non-proper words/phrases regardless of the part of speech. How about it, folks?

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#12 2010-12-22 11:10:59

burred
Eggcornista
From: Montreal
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 1112

Re: Anti-Lehmans

The examples given for prototypical anti-Lehmanns are much more eggcornical than Annie Lehmanns are. It’s too bad that pronunciation might make Aunty Lehmann confusing, because that form captures their eggcorneal side. As eggcorns, it seems to me that a new signification given to a proper name could go in any direction. It’d be useful to have Ken’s response – did he choose nouns and adjectives purposefully?

In Ken’s post, I think by “sand hill” he must be referring to “Sam Hell”.

I reiterate my affection for “bangle tiger”. Bangles are multicoloured glass bracelets traditionally worn in abundance by Indian women. The connection to the many-banded tiger that prowls the mangroves of the Bengal is strong and too good to let slide.

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#13 2010-12-22 18:16:49

yanogator
Eggcornista
From: Ohio
Registered: 2007-06-07
Posts: 237

Re: Anti-Lehmans

Here in the home of the Cincinnati Bengals, many natives pronounce it either “bangles” or “bingles”, so you might not see “bangle tiger” written here very often, but you certainly can hear it said.

Bruce


“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin

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#14 2010-12-23 06:19:54

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

Re: Anti-Lehmans

Dixon wrote:

Since klakritz defined Anti-Lehman as ”...the misconstrual of proper nouns or adjectives as common nouns or adjectives”, “Madeoff” wouldn’t qualify as one, since the proper name Madoff is here misconstrued as a verb phrase, not a noun or adjective. But since this misconstrual is really the same process whether the result is a noun, adjective or other part of speech, I propose that the definition of Anti-Lehman be broadened to include misconstruals which yield non-proper words/phrases regardless of the part of speech. How about it, folks?

I certainly agree that it would not make sense to exclude cases where the part of speech changes as part of the restructuring: they in fact would tend to be the more striking cases.

However, the end product here is not a verb phrase, but (as kem noted) a proper noun, specifically a last name, just a name that is built from a verb-phrase rather than from something less clearly specified. (A Slavic patronym-forming – off suffix may be recognized within it by some hearers/readers, but surely not all.) There is plenty of precedent for this in English: Shake-spear for instance … It might also be that made should be taken not as the preterite form of the verb but a participial (adjective- or noun-like) form.

So if we are to consider this an anti-Lehmann/aunty-Lehmann (like David B I prefer the ladder) we must not define the term as “a misconstrual which yields a non-proper word/phrase (regardless of the part of speech).” Probably it would be “a misconstrual which restructures a proper noun (regardless of the part of speech produced in the course of the restructuring.)”

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-12-24 14:21:38)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#15 2010-12-24 12:22:19

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: Anti-Lehmans

I retract my suggestion. I think I would prefer to stick with Ken’s original framing of the term and not include reshapings of proper nouns. An “Aunty Lehman,” then, would be something like “a substitution of a similar-sounding, sense-making adjective or common noun for a proper noun (cf eggcorn).” An “Annie Lehman” would be “the substitution of a similar-sounding proper name for an adjective or common noun. The substitution may have no semantic rational (cf ‘in Lehman’s terms’) or the proper name may have an appropriate semantic import for the context (cf ‘penny Annie’ where ‘Annie’=\waif, orphan, poor girl’).”

This would leave us without a term to describe “the respelling of a proper name to bring it into line with the semantics of a similar-sounding non-proper word.” I suppose we could borrow the Dickens character and call them “gradegrinds.” Other ideas?


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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