Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I have no published reference. My (I think very bright,) 12 year old niece was concerned that her grandmother “has osteoporousness!”
This seems almost as descriptive as “old timer’s disease” to my somewhat biased mind. Do you like it?
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Hey, Pointless_Hack, welcome to the forum. I see that no one has replied to your message – it’s that time of year, when everyone holds his, her, and their breath for the best-of-the-year runoff, based on the list that Kem is generously compiling behind the scenes.
I think your preternaturally bright 12 year old niece has neatly recovered the meaning of osteoporosis but has not changed it. A key feature of an eggcorn is that it reimages a word or phrase, reinterprets it and casts it in a logical but altered form. So although it’s startlingly perceptive of her, she hasn’t coined a new eggcorn, I don’t think.
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Roger that, and thank you. I’m still feeling out differences between Malapropism and Eggcorn. Wikipedia’s Malapropism entry throws yet another term into the mix, leaving me still a little muddled. Happy, though, that I have a better term for “strategery” and “refudiate!” My mother taught me to respect authority ;-)
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