Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
My daughter writes:
When I was chatting with a friend the other day, she flubbed her words and “auschwitz” came out as “off-switch.”
Morbid, eh? More of a Freudian slip than an eggcorn, since it is not standard usage.
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Freudian in suggesting that people’s lives get switched off there?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Freudian in suggesting that people’s lives get switched off there?
Yes. On this forum we haven’t really mapped out the differences between Freudian sleeps and eggcorns. There is a good deal of overlap. The difference lies, I suppose, in the intention. Eggcorns are intended (even if incorrect) reworkings, Freudian slips are not. A person challenged after using an eggcorn would conceivably defend the usage. A Freudian slipper would not.
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A Freudian slip still makes sense because it matches some sense (some intention or feeling if not some thought) in the perpetrator’s psyche. There are also, I believe, serendipitous bloops that make far better sense than the perpetrator could ever have meant.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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