Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
I seem to remember we had a term for visual rather than spoken eggcorns, for here the g clearly becomes a j sound when the n and g switch places. The reinterpretation seems suitably unpleasant with its double or revisited pungency whereas the acorn looks as if it ought to be something to do with martial arts or casual violence, perhaps.
Ideal for cars, these air freshers can also be installed in your homes or offices. It will eradicate the most repungent of smells and instead replace it with a gentle …
The Spartan system created a discipined, skilled soldier but it was brutal, morally repungent, had a stupidly low replacement rate.
The striking colours of this nudibranch Phyllidia warn its potential predators of its repungent taste. Nudibranchs are omnivore foragers.
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Both words trace back to the Latin parent pugnare. The “gn” phoneme is just one of several Greek/Latin consonant digrams that modern English speakers struggle with. Most of the time we solve the “gn” problem by making the “g” silent (consign, arraign, campaign, impugn, gnaw, peignoir, bologna etc.) Where both consonant retain their sound, one solution has been hard syllabification between the “g” and “n” (compare “ignorant” and “cognomen,” which have sucked the “g” at the beginning of the second syllable into the first). Words that have kept both consonant sounds often present spelling challenges: speakers like to reverse the sounds. As in igneous/ingeous, signal/singal, cygnet/cynget.
Last edited by kem (2014-07-27 11:02:21)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I liked the self-confirmatory spelling of “I’m just an old ingoramus†when I ran across it. Sometimes it’s used tongue-in-cheek, but other times that seems doubtful.
To deny that is to to be a complete ingoramous, for you are in fact insisting that there is nothing new for us all-knowing humans beings to discover.
I wonder, though, if that’s “reversing the sounds†and not rather just reversing the keystrokes (or written letterforms) from the unusual g-n to the extremely common and well-rehearsed n-g . Does anyone pronounce ingeous, singal, cynget , etc.
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I remember once getting a US customs form that said Sing on the reverse side . I set it down on the floor with the reverse side up, stood on it, and asked what they would like me to sing. The customs agent was not amused.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2014-07-27 09:14:31)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Does anyone pronounce ingeous, singal, cynget , etc.
Good question. These seem to be primarily orthographical errors. But people who have not heard the words spoken may venture a revised pronunciation. When I was a child. I was confused for years about “ingot,” an “ng” word I read it as “ignot” and tried to say it that way. I think I came across it in a Donald Duck comic.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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How ingoble of you! Ignot — I love it! Ignlorious (nope, that one doesn’t work!)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Does anyone pronounce ingeous, singal, cynget , etc.
O yes. As a child I was briefly involved with a group of older boys who were trainspotters. It quickly became clear that I did not possess the fortitude for such a forlorn activity, but i did notice that all of them pronounced “signal box” as if it were “single box”. I pointed out the disparity with the spelling, but they assured me that despite this it was pronounced their way. One of them was actually unable to articulate signal despite his best efforts. He had the same problem with crusts which he could deliver only as crusses.
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