Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Don’t hold your brief for Ryan Reynolds Deadpool to take on Taskmaster in a sequel.
movie discussion
No gag shown (and other than maybe a quick shot at the beginning of the episode, I wouldn’t hold your brief for another gag scene).
bondage discussion
In the US… well, forget about trying to get a visa (except a Visa card/Master Card) for that country, it’s impossible—and the Nazis waiting for you at the borders are so scary that you just hold your brief when they check you).
blog
Take a deep brief. Stop and think about why you feel this way?
blog
I will only know you by the way how you worry so calm down take a deep brief and think of something happy or go to the movies
Q&A site
If someone is upset that’s their problem. It isn’t the end of the world. Take a deep brief and say no.
blog
Take a deep brief of air and breath it deep into the stomach.
religious site
...I didn’t understand it so I thought I was going to field on the math test but my teacher told me to come down and take a deep brief and breath so this is my connection with the bog…
book discussion
[Interesting that, in the last two examples, after using brief for breath, the perps use breath for breathe. And note also that the last perp uses field for fail and bog for—who knows what?]
There are a fair number of examples online, but I’m not sure that either the pronunciation criterion nor the meaning criterion is sufficient for eggcornicity. Perhaps the idea is that holding one’s breath or taking a deep breath constitutes a brief pause. Or, it might even be just a silicism in most cases.
Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2015-12-31 06:13:41)
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This one surprises me. It seems like something is going on. The semantic connection between “breath” and “brief” is a literary trope. Think about A.E. Houseman’s “breath’s a ware that will not keep” and Psalms 39 and 144
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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The (cockney? some sort of British, in my experience) tendency to substitute f for syllable-final th is probably part of this picture. (E.g. breath can be pronounce breff .)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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