Eggcorn Forum

Of course every spermatozoon is a seaman, on a night sea journey with his brother seamen.

How can a man increase the amount of his seamen?
Just Answer

The scene entitled “He Made His Own Interpretation” starts with the principal telling Bernard and Joan that Frank is masturbating, and wiping his seamen on school property.
Movie review

I like the idea that the citizens of Rome are Romen.

Friends, Romen, Country Men, lend me your Ears
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/new … 5-a-4.html

The Ottomen relied on multilingual guards, the dragomen.

September 3 1783 In all parts of Barbary, as at Constantinople, a guard of two dragomen are sent from the government to reside at the ministers’ houses : these guards accompany the family when they walk out.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=GcwTAAA … 22&f=false

Being high on the totem, the Brahmen were undoubtedly braw men.

Actually, the Brahmen are the highest rank Hindu I think
http://www.masterzdm.com/NCD/showthread … =&sb=5&o=0

Dolmen was the weak one of the litter. The plural is dolmens, so I assumed if it was used as ‘many dolmen’ that it was being conjugated as if it were humen.

Youman being is a classic.

Last edited by David Bird (2011-12-22 17:51:28)

There is also “shamen” for “shamans.” In printed literature the error occurs once for every 100 examples of the correct plural.

Are you referring to “Normen,” Juan? Unlike other misconstrued plurals in this thread, Norman really does have the Teutonic “man” in it. So Normen would be a reasonable plural (and was in fact the plural of Norman in Old English, according to the OED).

Fowler may or may not be right in para 27 about the word “German.” We don’t know whether the Teutonic “man” is really a part of the tribal name the Romans used (the “Germani”) that evolved into our word for “German” and “Germany.”

I didn’t have time or wit to do more than post a link. It does seem perverse to not pluralise Norman with -men. I wonder if it’s more what the Normans called themselves (Normanz?) than what their Anglo-Saxon subjects called them, when they weren’t calling them something more colourful, but equally Anglo-Saxon!

The introduction to the section, numbered 422, is a pretty definition of eggcorning loan-words. Any chance of that being put up as an image? I don’t know where to start.

Last edited by JuanTwoThree (2015-03-27 04:02:50)

I’ve certainly come across “speciman” (on paper) in a medical context, and you can find “speciman containers” and the like online.

As for “shamen”, there was a UK band called The Shamen who had a number one hit in the early nineties. I’m from there originally, and I don’t think I’d ever heard of a shaman when this song came out. Some instances of shamen (perhaps even for the singular) could have been influenced by this.

Last edited by crispybacon (2015-07-22 04:58:48)