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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2014-04-05 16:39:54

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

April nonces

It’s my annual infliction of obscure noncense. April Fish Day has a tradition going back, way back in the venerable annals of this forum, whereby singleton discoveries get a free ride. Their eggcornhood cannot really be determined on an anecdoatal basis, and some of them are just interesting slips and anomalies, so I put them here in Slips and misshapings.

The first one needs some preamble. The heavy steel-walled containers for construction debris I walk by every day have this sign on them. There was only one hit for the eggcorn it suggested.

does anyone here think that a 500,000 tonne steel structure with curtain steel walls would be punctured by hitting a stationary 100 tonne aluminium aircraft?
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthre … p=68969801

Wait, huh?

I first thought the next was a nonce, but then found a couple of more hits by dent of google images.

(image of crayfish) cooked grayfish and grayfifish knife
Photo for sale

(picture of crayfish) Signal grayfish
http://www.peterpreece.com/USERIMAGES/S … ayfish.jpg

White Grayfish kill my pleco
Youtube video

Next, a malaprop. Then the list.

In conclusion we can say that total lipids increase in all the diseases taken into consideration, but in a way independent of the disease’s ideology.
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=& … WM&cad=rja

lol yeah I know the delorded does. Its stronger than morphine. Morphine stopped working for me.
twitter

Pent up anger and mental disturbance lay doorman in every school across the country waiting to break out.
Gun violence

What teeth I do have are covered with plaque and I have hollow toeses or whatever…it means bad breath but I don’t know what it has to do with your toeses.
Caption contest

Proper winter boots, proper winter sweaters, either down duvet, double glazing are things the British should get familiar with.
delight at london snowfall

I’ve never hunted in my whole life. But today, for the first time, I’ve seen a lion hunting (and killing) a buffalo and a leopard hunting an impaler!
Feng Shui guy

Magarite, Caulis Dendrobii, Bear’s gallblader, antlerope horn, cornus officinalis
Chinese medicine

The Red Wheelies aim to raise positive awareness of mobile sclerosis or MS.
http://www.arirang.co.kr/News/News_View … category=1

And the winner is:

everything is pretty horrifying but the audience takes pleasure in utterly despising every human onscreen and watching them earn their justice hurts.
movie review

Acorns: etiology, Dilaudid, dormant, halitosis, eider, impala, antelope, multiple, just deserts.

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#2 2014-04-06 23:45:45

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: April nonces

Justice hurts! Ooooh! (and the others)
.
(Surely the hollow toeses were purposeful?)
.
I like the figure of the doorman lying along the threshold.


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#3 2014-04-07 09:03:20

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: April nonces

“Justice hurts” for “just deserts” would be among the best eggcorns of all time—if only it could be certified.

“Disease ideology” seems like it might have some claim to eggcornhood. “Etiology” and “ideology” occupy a common conceptual space.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#4 2014-04-09 21:35:42

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: April nonces

Awesome list!

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#5 2018-01-18 20:10:08

burred
Eggcornista
From: Montreal
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 1112

Re: April nonces

I make a habit of checking every once in a while for new manifestations of some of the more unlikely but striking eggcorns. To my delight, the uniquecorn justice hurts has a twin.

Oh they’ll get their justice hurts when lovable ol man Kevin tells America exactly what happened
snippet from http://tweettunnel.com/natehitz

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#6 2018-01-20 07:07:20

Peter Forster
Eggcornista
From: UK
Registered: 2006-09-06
Posts: 1222

Re: April nonces

Kem said:

“Justice hurts” for “just deserts” would be among the best eggcorns of all time—if only it could be certified.

I can accept, just, and because I’ve little choice in the matter, that a solitary nonce/singleton/uniquecorn on its own is insufficient evidence of usage, but at what point is there sufficient evidence? After all, much of eggcornish misapprehension is tucked away in our heads, emerging occasionally in speech and perhaps even less often in written form. For me, this second example of David’s confers full eggcornhood and I agree with Kem that it’s a rarity of ostrich dimensions.

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#7 2018-01-20 12:57:10

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: April nonces

Peter, I agree with you that a truly well-documented single instance (uniquecorn) ought to be enough to alert us to an eggcorn, but it would have to include some kind of a perp’s confession, I should think, or other evidence that it is indeed standard for the perp, and such evidence will usually involve repetitive usage. Even then, and certainly in this case, I wind up with the caveat in my mind, “as long as it is not the case that both perps said it advertently. It is funny enough that they might well do it on purpose.” I would be quite capable (culpable?) of putting it into an email or spoken comment, now that it is in my mind again.

The main thing several citations do for me is decrease the probability that all the perps failed to realize the acorn > eggcorn discrepancy.


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#8 2018-01-21 12:16:35

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: April nonces

Two of the great ironies in our quest to find the eggcorns in the English language:

(1) The funniest eggcorn candidates (which often translates, in my ecosystem, into “the best eggcorn candidates”) require much better evidence than unfunny ones, because many of the examples may be puns.

(2) A confession by an eggcorner, the gold standard of eggcorn proof, is proof only for a previous eggcorn, since it comes when the confessor escapes from the community of those who use the eggcorn. A confession is not the proof of a current eggcorn, but the proof of a tendency to transform an acorn. The current use still needs to be documented.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#9 2018-01-21 13:20:07

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: April nonces

A confession can be proof of a current eggcorn, when it makes clear the perp’s eggcornish understanding even though he is yet unaware of the acornish interpretation/pronunciation/spelling. Granted, it usually is as you say, Kem.


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#10 2018-01-21 17:02:02

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: April nonces

kem wrote:

A confession is not the proof of a current eggcorn, but the proof of a tendency to transform an acorn. The current use still needs to be documented.

I’m not so sure about this. We don’t need a living, breathing dinosaur to establish that dinosaurs existed, and we still call them “dinosaurs” rather than “former dinosaurs” even though they’ve been gone for 66 million years. Even the best-established eggcorns are from the past, even if it’s just a few minutes in the past and, in principle, it’s possible that all eggcorn perps have learned that their usage was an eggcorn and stopped using it since the time they wrote or uttered the example that we have found. This doesn’t mean that it wasn’t an eggcorn, even though we have established its eggcornicity on a sort of fossil evidence. To call it an eggcorn tells us nothing about whether it’s still used as such, any more than calling something a plesiosaur tells us anything about whether it still lives. If you find some value in documenting current use for an eggcorn, that’s fine, but I’d say we can still call it an eggcorn once its eggcornicity has been established for some time in the past, just as we can call an archaic noun a noun even if no one is using it anymore. Once an eggcorn, always an eggcorn.

Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2018-01-21 17:26:58)

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#11 2018-01-21 17:46:10

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: April nonces

Perhaps we should call these come-and-gone eggcorns “fossil eggcorns.” We have an army of English teachers and lexicographers trying to make all eggcorns into fossil eggcorns. With mostly limited success.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#12 2018-01-21 18:16:36

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: April nonces

kem wrote:

Perhaps we should call these come-and-gone eggcorns “fossil eggcorns.” We have an army of English teachers and lexicographers trying to make all eggcorns into fossil eggcorns…

Of course, once an eggcorn is established as such, proving that no one is currently using it as an eggcorn is akin to “proving a negative”. Even if we could show that all UFO reports had prosaic explanations, we couldn’t prove that there are no UFOs landing somewhere right now, and even if we could extinguish all eggcorns through education (and we can’t!), we’d have no way of knowing that there’s not someone using one of them right now. This is a good reminder that eggcornology is a very uncertain enterprise.

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#13 2018-01-21 18:18:10

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: April nonces

Dixon Wragg wrote:

kem wrote:

Perhaps we should call these come-and-gone eggcorns “fossil eggcorns.” We have an army of English teachers and lexicographers trying to make all eggcorns into fossil eggcorns…

Of course, once an eggcorn is established as such, proving that no one is currently using it as an eggcorn is akin to “proving a negative”. Even if we could show that all UFO reports had prosaic explanations, we couldn’t prove that there are no UFOs landing somewhere right now, and even if we could extinguish all eggcorns through education (and we can’t; Why would we even want to?), we’d have no way of knowing that there’s not someone using one of them right now. This is a good reminder that eggcornology is a very uncertain enterprise.

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