Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
We’ve seen one example on this forum of the confusion between “side†and “size†(lopsized) The mixup between the two terms is more general, however. “Size†and “side†can substitute for each other in a variety of contexts. Here are some fractured idioms
“Wrong size of the bed†“
A tweet: “I woke up on the wrong size of the bedâ€
“Thorn in my sizeâ€
Web page development forum: “Hey guys, this has been a thorn in my size so bad that I spent hours hunting down style defs â€
“Hit the size of a barnâ€
Comment on graphic arts page: “No wonder the Stormtroopers lost they couldn’t hit the size of a barn!â€
“Sunny size upâ€
Food blog: “Two eggs, sunny-size up are fried onto the dough.â€
“Pick on someone your own sideâ€
YouTube group: “ I teach you how to pick on someone your own sideâ€
“All shapes and sidesâ€
Music store reviews: “Since 1935, this place has been selling and renting top quality products to musicians of all shapes and sides.â€
These are mostly low-frequency slips. Only the last switch, “all shapes and sides†for “all shapes and sizes,†occurs on a large number of web sites.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Interesting! Also:
“Cut him down to side” yields 3 Google hits.
“One side fits all” yields almost 700 hits, including lots of clothing catalogs!
“That’s about the side of it” yields 2 hits.
“Whose size are you on” yields just 1 hit—and it’s a pun, not an eggcorn—but “Who’s size are you on” yields 2 unique hits.
“I’m on your size” yields no hits that looked like eggcorns.
“Sizeswiped” yields 1 unique hit (”...sizeswiped by the truck…”).
“a size order of” (instead of “side order”) yields 10 unique eggcornish hits.
You’ve struck a rich vein here, kem!
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One side fits all. Makes good, alternate sense. Nice one.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I think “a size order of” also makes good sense, even though it only yielded 10 unique hits (so far). People may be thinking in terms of a “size order” being a portion of a certain typical size, perhaps a little smaller than an entree.
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Fairly common on the {size} size :
One final note, the VW Golf is actually kind of on the big size. A lot of people drive vehicles that are a size class down on it
They were Angus meatballs I got at Publix, kind of on the big size. Had to eat them with …
Im kind of on the big size but not extremely big , lets just say im a XL in aeropostale t-shirts
The pool is not on the big size but it was clean.
the room itself was kind of on the small size, just barely big enough to fit a queen size bed and drawers
I have visited the dorms and they’re kind of on the small size. But there are extra security measures since it is an all girls school such as a pass-code
For me, the HTC Evo hit the sweet spot for screen size on a phone. The iPhone is a little on the small size, even with the retina display
i think the sugar-coated part was saying he was on the “small size of average†as opposed to just saying he was “smallâ€
This one has some definite eggcorn potential, I think. The great number of them likely means it is standard for some. (It also may well be a blend for many. Not a very likely typo.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2014-09-30 14:52:26)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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