Eggcorn Forum

I assume the vaginal imagery implied by the “trough” and the relationship commitment implied by pledging it are clear to everyone, and that this meaning connection makes “pledge the trough” a true eggcorn of “plight one’s troth”.

patschwieterman wrote:

Pynchon notoriously has a joke about “pledging trough” in a porcine context in Gravity’s Rainbow that was almost certainly intended to have vaginal undertones and bestial overtones. But would this really be something that people using “pledging trough” seriously (rather than punningly) are thinking of consciously?

I find it hard to imagine any other intended/assumed meaning apart from the vaginal image, except for the notion of sharing food, which, with the porcine connotation of “trough”, hardly seems more delicate than the vaginal meaning.

If I were someone about to marry, and I sincerely thought that “pledging my trough” had vaginal connections, I’d be way too embarrassed to use the phrase in reference to my own wedding.

But not everyone would be.

(And all of this casts David’s final comment in the original post in a fascinating if lurid light.)

Uh…let’s not even go there. Moving right along…

I’ve always assumed that heightened language like “plighting one’s troth” is intended at least partially to distract attention away from the biological nitty-gritty underpinning marriage, rather than focusing attention upon it.

But the issue of the eggcornicity of “pledging one’s trough” does not depend upon either the denotation or the connotation of the acorn “plighting one’s troth”; it just depends on the assumed meaning of “pledging one’s trough” being relevant to the situation described (marriage).

I’m not sure how well I remembered the “pledging trough” moment, but here’s the scene in Google Books—you have to scroll to the middle of p. 576 and look for the italics: http://books.google.com/books?id=iPDGp7 … &q&f=false

Last edited by patschwieterman (2011-06-26 12:20:23)

DavidTuggy wrote:

If trough is a vaginal reference, wouldn’t you expect the female to pledge hers to the male, and not vice versa?

Initially, yes. Then the meaning would generalize, especially since most people picking up on the phrase would not even be thinking about the original meaning or connotations.

DT wrote:

If trough is a vaginal reference, wouldn’t you expect the female to pledge hers to the male, and not vice versa?

Yeah, that was my basic point with the comment about David’s final remark in the first post—I wasn’t seriously impugning his manhood (piquantly or otherwise).

Dixon wrote:

But the issue of the eggcornicity of “pledging one’s trough” does not depend upon either the denotation or the connotation of the acorn “plighting one’s troth”; it just depends on the assumed meaning of “pledging one’s trough” being relevant to the situation described (marriage).

Dixon, if I understand you, then I disagree pretty strongly. A reshaping that doesn’t depend in some way on the meaning of the acorn specifically (rather than just its context) isn’t an eggcorn. People argue a lot about the definition of eggcorn, but I actually thought that this particular idea was something on which there’d been a fairly clear consensus. For me, the eggcorn has to seem to mean pretty much the same thing in the contexts in which the acorn works in order to be an eggcorn (with the understanding that phrasal eggcorns only need to be parallel to their phrasal acorns).

Last edited by patschwieterman (2011-06-26 18:47:13)

Dixon wrote:

To me, the idea that the same phrase, used in the same way with the same intended meaning, would be an eggccorn when used by someone who made the eggcorning mistake, but would not be called an eggcorn if someone else picked it up and used it without going through the eggcorning process is problematical.

But neither I nor David has made this problematical assertion in this exchange. Personally, I think the type of thing you’re talking about does indeed happen—in fact I made a somewhat similar argument years ago in posts on “Old Timer’s Disease” and “bag of shells,” and I’ve pointed back towards those comments repeatedly over the years (and I posted links to a LL post by Mark Liberman making an interesting variant of the-once-it-gets-started-it-can-get-passed-around argument just days ago). But there are circumstances in which such “generalization” occurs readily and others in which it doesn’t. One of the problems for me here is that the same phrase regularly has different intended meanings and uses for different groups of speakers. The use and meaning of the “N-word” may be “generalized,” as you say, in one way among black speakers and in another way among white speakers, but a Caucasian who isn’t mindful of those boundaries and “picks up” the usage of the word from African Americans is probably headed for trouble. And speakers actively “police the boundaries” of gendered identity at least as fervently as they do the boundaries of racial identity. Gendered phrases don’t jump from speaker to speaker as easily as some that are less “marked.” I have indeed heard women talk about other women as “having the balls to do such and such,” but the self-consciousness with which the phrase is used by women is almost always palpable, and a tendency towards irony and/or humor is pretty strong in such usage. I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions—the world is big—but I do think the idea of “generalization” is generally less general than you’re making it out to be.

For the “trough” usage to be an eggcorn in the way you’ve suggested, someone needs to be thinking about that vaginal connection. And if women can think of that, why can’t it occur to men, too? But the second it occurs to men, their gender-appropriateness alarms—and you’ll be hard-pressed to convince me we don’t all have them, even if we sometimes manage to ignore them—may well be going off.

But I’m still not convinced that this would be used sincerely and non-ironically by any woman it consciously occurred to. I’ve argued before that a reshaping that calls too much attention to itself in the context in which it is likely to be used has less chance of succeeding as an eggcorn. I think a little bit of register shift is possible from acorn to eggcorn, but in ritual situations—such as marriage ceremonies—attention to register is greatly heightened. The extremely uncomfortable fit with its ritual context of a phrase that refers to vaginas—and refers to them in terms of the filthy containers from which animals like pigs and cows eat—makes it unlikely to get past the register filters of just about anybody. I don’t think this is jumping from women to men in part because I think it’s a non-starter from the very beginning.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2011-06-29 02:19:19)

Snap quiz! Books and notes down, pencils up.

The “plight” in plight one’s troth is most closely allied in meaning to:
1. pledge
2. risk
3. situate
4. ply
5. play
6. plait
7. plate

The “troth” in plight one’s troth is closest in meaning to:
8. trough
9. trot
10. truth
11. anger
12. train
13. future
14. suit
14. worldly goods

Out there and common: pledge * troth, plight * trough, plied * troth

That test was clearly too easy. I can see I’m going to have to scale the marks downward. The original meaning of “plight” was “to risk”, which morphed into pledge, as commit or accept the risk, so I’m afraid I can’t give you full marks for the first one.

Dr. Bird wrote:

The original meaning of “plight” was “to risk”, which morphed into pledge, as commit or accept the risk, so I’m afraid I can’t give you full marks for the first one.

I get to play student advocate, for once: So why doesn’t Dixon get full marks, professor? In 2011, “plight” is most strongly allied in meaning with “pledge”; here’s definition 2b from the OED:

b. spec. To pledge (one’s troth, faith, etc.) as (part of) an act of betrothal or marriage. See also troth-plight v.

And the “risk” definition is marked “Now rare.” I’m thinking you owe Dixon some points.

Kem wrote:

“Risking the truth” would apply to most of the posts on this forum.

Hey, you gotta break some heads if you wanna make an omelette.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2011-07-01 23:53:35)

My consultations with the campus lawyers indicate that I am happy to award you full marks after all, Dixon. So put down that torch; what is this, a hockey match?