Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
The most interesting case came in several years ago. She was an extremely elderly backwoodsy lady who said that she has “worms coming from her privates.” I took her right back to a pelvic room and grabbed the surgeon to go in and check this out. He could not place the speculum, so we had to do a visual, and sure enough, there were some kind of long things but they broke off in the DR’s hand. Bottom line, she had forgotten a vital fact. She has prolapse of the uterus, and had used a potatoe as a pissery. It was in a dark warm place and grew! It was not too easy getting it out either!!!!!!
http://www.starbacks.ca/Paris/Metro/2012/er.html
An amazing case of Muphry’s Law. This paragraph is from a nurse’s list of funny eggcorny mistakes her patients have made. But you might have been as puzzled as I was about using a potato as a pissery. I found out that a pessary is a tampon or some sort of medical device inserted to support falling organs. Pessaries are also used for incontinence.
Last edited by David Bird (2011-11-19 13:25:14)
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Thank you (?) for that story. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve mopped up my lunch.
“Pessary” is new to me. The word seems to come from a Latin term for a plug. One use of a pessary is to prevent urine leakage, so “pissary” would be an appropriate substitution (though “antipissary” would make more sense).
“Pissary” for “pessary” is well-established on the web. Here’s someone who confesses to the eggcorn:
Blog entry “Once we had the right size pessary inserted (which I keep thinking of as a “ pissary â€), Healthy Nurse asked me what sort of exercises make me leak. ”
Last edited by kem (2014-07-18 14:06:49)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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