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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Mishearing is an important source of eggcorns. Simple misspellings are not eggcorns, of course, although they can be interesting and transparent. The following were collected in a few days of listening closely to pronunciations from around the world on BBC World Service.
[Title] Yuge Python
[Description] My mate man handling a yuge python.
Hutube
What does menusha mean?
ChaCha questions
[Q] I want to ask… Which do you find more effective… Air chokes or blood chokes?
[A] We set in a large circle faceing outward. He went around behind us and applied an air type blockage until we tapped out(usually when ones vision started to narrow). After a break, he did the same thing with a carroted artory neck choke. The tap outs were much, much quicker with that technique.
Survivalist parlour trick
me jumping off sand june
Youjyoob
Give ‘em a bible and let them show where in the scripture homosectial marriage is condoned. Until then, it shouldn’t be allwoed, period.
Gay sects
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burred, you’re a font of fun stuff.
Off the top of my head, I can remember that, when I worked in mental health, I and others were confused about “extrapyramidal symptoms” versus “extraparametal symptoms”. I know there are other examples of phonetic misspelling I’ve encountered, but can’t bring them to mind right now.
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Oh, I just remembered this one: Some years ago I was conversing with a British woman and she used the word “Chooda”. I said “What?”, and she repeated it a couple of times, but I still couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say. Finally, she spelled it out for me: “T – U – D – O – R”! Someone needs to teach these Brits to speak English ;^D
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that’s what the book meant when they said Betty youst to be a dog then they switched her to a human.
Youtube comment
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I don’t think I’ve told the story that’s similar to Dixon’s “Chooda” story. When I was a corporate trainer, I would sometimes receive calls from companies offering to sell us training classes. One woman was asking me various questions about our set-up, and she asked, “Are there any treaches that you attend regularly?” Naturally, I asked her to repeat the question, and she did, exactly as before. I asked for another repetition, and received the question again, with absolutely no attempt to speak more clearly. Finally, I had to say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not understanding the word ‘treaches’. Could you spell that for me, please?” She replied, “T-R-A-D-E S-H-O-W-S”. In three repetitions, she didn’t once make it sound anything like two words. It was “treaches” all three times.
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
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To my ear though, chooda sounds no worse than toodrr, and besides I’m used to hearing tunes as choons, tuna as choona, a tutor as choota and a tuba, or tuber, as chooba. I’ve even heard chrain for train.
My non-rhotic Welsh friends would probably point out that Tudor should be pronounced more like Tidda, with that last vowel a short schwa.
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Peter Forster wrote:
To my ear though, chooda sounds no worse than toodrr, and besides I’m used to hearing tunes as choons, tuna as choona, a tutor as choota and a tuba, or tuber, as chooba. I’ve even heard chrain for train.
My non-rhotic Welsh friends would probably point out that Tudor should be pronounced more like Tidda, with that last vowel a short schwa.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgh!
So apparently in England there’s considerable danger that one might attempt to cook and eat a tuba or play music on a tuber, since they’re indistinguishable ;^P
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Oh yes, you might even encounter a piano tuna.
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Peter Forster wrote:
Oh yes, you might even encounter a piano tuna.
Ha! I’m reminded of this joke: Did you hear that they had to recall a lot of Mercury automobiles? Traces of tuna were found in some of them.
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And that reminds me of one of Lily Tomlin’s old jokes:
“I went to six different stores trying to find a can of rat hairs and animal impurities, and every one I found had tuna fish in it.”
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
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Oh my goodness. ChaCha fail. I thought their questions were answered by real folks? The answerer went for “mensch” rather than “minutiae” (did I even spell that right? haha)?
burred wrote:
What does menusha mean?
ChaCha questions
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Watching Olympic tennis on Saturday, I was puzzled to hear that a new term was being used for a tied game, a term which I heard as “gin”, where I thought it should be “deuce”. Listening very closely I discovered I’d got it wrong, it wasn’t the Queen Mum’s favourite drink that was being proclaimed, it was “juice”.
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And so, while the fab crowd stayed at the fabulous resorts where they rested and dined well and then whooped it up by night, lesser souls were having a juice of a time, just finding a rhythm, and luvs, this made for a lot of miserable would-be revellers.
Jamaica Gleaner social notes
All instances from Jamaica. They might all be due to one Perp Zero.
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