Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Although patschwieterman has previously posted “honey cone” for honeycomb, I haven’t found a posting for “pine comb” as a replacement for pine cone. I think the imagery supporting the substitution of comb for cone is fairly clear – the scales on the pine cone seem to provide the impetus to call it a “comb” because of their arrangement and their general similarity to the teeth in a comb. “Pine cone” gets 7.52K hits, while “pine comb” gets 1.7K hits.
I might have had the pine comb come in from a different angle, ... (well maybe pine comb more central?) but the photo seems to be too great to be a warning …www.deviantart.com/deviation/19162177/
Will a pine comb grow into a tree if u just plant it? i have a bunch of pine combs from my vacation at south dakota and want to grow the trees they came from.need advice on what to do to get them to …answers.yahoo.com/question/index?
Then, from her pocket she took a pine comb and a shovel. ... Then she took the pine comb from her mother’s hand and placed it gently in the ground. ...authorandrea.blogspot.com/ – 85k
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Nicely done! Kids almost always have experience with a comb before they encounter a pine cone, and you clearly spell out the physical similarities.
I’m just surprised that you found this eggcorn right under our noses! Kudos!
Last edited by jorkel (2007-05-15 16:14:48)
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Yeah – good one. I actually remember thinking that the “fir cones” in Poohsticks were called “fir combs” when I was a boy. Because I only knew about pinecones, not fir cones, as the denizens of the 100-acre woods called them.
Even today, every time I’ve got a hankerin to play me some Poohsticks, it’s combs that come to mind.
And that’s all, of course, b/c I never get around to playing Poohsticks.
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Looking through photos last night searching for a baby picture of the oldest (for the school yearbook), I found a picture of her at age 2, trying to comb her hair w/ a “pine comb.”
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Arnold Zwicky recorded pinecomb << pinecone in an early Language Log post. He says that it was noted by Diane Rainaud in the STUMPERS-L listserv.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Techwreck, thanks for bringing back old memories of when I (and, I think, all the other kids I knew) used the term “pine comb”. I’d forgotten about that.
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