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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I encountered this today:
In this episode, MonsterTalk interviews two of the scientists who are working on the show to find out if this is a serious search for Bigfoot, or just folks out in the woods raising cane.
[from an email update from Skeptic magazine]
“Raise Cain”, meaning to create an uproar (a reference to Cain, the first murderer in Judeo-Christian mythology), dates back to about 1800, according to Google Ngram. The variation “raise cane” is very common. Since I can easily picture someone waving a cane about agitatedly, threateningly while raising Cain/cane, it sure seems like a real eggcorn to me!
Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2014-01-08 02:49:47)
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Ken Lakritz posted this one back in the pre-Forum: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/contribute/
“Raising Cain” may be a 19th century euphemism. People were wont to speak of “raising hell” and “raising the devil” (raising in the sense of “raising a spirit”). Cain, perhaps, was a less threatening redivivus.
It may also be that the perps are thinking, not so much about sugar cane, but about beating someone with a walking cane, another popular 19th century sport (it happened in Congress just before the Civil War—the victim nearly died).
Last edited by kem (2014-01-09 11:23:11)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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kem wrote:
It may also be that the perps are thinking, not so much about sugar cane, but about beating someone with a walking cane, another popular 19th century sport…
That’s exactly the image I was referring to.
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