Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
This was a mistake made by a friend of mine, who assumed that the old folks with oxygen tanks were…oxygenarians!
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Very nice one! Thanks for adding your rhetorick to the forum. (I.e. welcome!)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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“Oxygenarian†for “octogenarian†would be a great eggcorn. If it is real. Are you sure your friend wasn’t punning?
When I tried to find the error on the internet I could only come up with two examples that (1) didn’t look like they were puns, (2) weren’t referring to people on restricted diets who were “eating†little more than the oxygen they breathed, and (3) weren’t in transcriptions where the transcriber may have simply recorded what they thought they heard. The two examples are:
Blog entry: “AOL turned 25 years old last week. In Internet years that makes them a qualified oxygenarian, the Internet was only opened up to commercial interest back in 1989.â€
Myspace open letter: “Yet, entire generations are growing up to where in sixty years it would not be beyond the realm of reason to imagine a couple of oxygenarians embracing each other…â€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Sadly, all the examples of “septicgenarian” seem to be deliberate puns. There are loads of “septigenarians” and “septagenarians” but no discernable eggcornery is at play. In fact ‘septuagenarian’ would have stumped me and I think that I’d have opted for something like one of the first two if I’d been asked what came between ‘sexagenarian’ and ‘octagenarian’.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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I’d have opted for something like one of the first two if I’d been asked what came between ‘sexagenarian’ and ‘octagenarian’
For most folks, what comes between sexagenarian and octogenarian is death.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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kem wrote:
“Oxygenarian†for “octogenarian†would be a great eggcorn. If it is real. Are you sure your friend wasn’t punning?
No punning. She was genuinely confused and genuinely embarrassed.
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To hear it from the mouth of a repentant person is the eggcorn gold standard.
Not everyone generates such good eggcorns. Perhaps you should follow her around with a microphone. She may be to eggcorns what Spooner was to spoonerisms.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Six years ago I was skeptical about “oxygenarian.” I’m less so now. More and more examples are appearing in which the pun is not apparent. It may be an eggplant, but it seems to be entering standard eggcorn territory.
Fashion industry ezine: “No, he’s not the smooth-foreheaded man he was in the mid-nineties but it is equally true to say that he is not the slow-off-the-mark oxygenarian that one would expect him to be either.â€
Chat board: “Enjoy the decade, and when I become an oxygenarian, you may relinquish the title once more to a younger cadre.â€
Investing op-ed in ezine: “Likewise they would argue that because my friend Debbie and her staff (many of whom volunteer their time) are as much pro-unborn-women as they are pro-angry- oxygenarian women that they have a “special place in hell†waiting for them.â€
Game forum: “Yeah if it was remotely true – rather than the ramblings of a slightly mad oxygenarian â€
UK religious ezine interview: “We came here about 16 years ago to take over a small Assemblies of God church that had dwindled down to 8 spinsters, the youngest of which was 76 and the rest of them were all oxygenarians.â€
Motorcycle forum comment: “At the very least, it might give some inspiration to the forums oxygenarians â€
Yelp golf course review: “I did see (no less than 30 minuets later) two oxygenarians head to the first tee.â€
Blog/ezine: “You have to love this story of a 74 years young still rocking to the oldies along with all of the kiddies that were fillies way back then… If you can still move it this cat says, and grove it to the movement of a hall full of oxygenarians who haven’t given up while still looking to party, you have to acknowledge that we still live in a beautiful worldâ€
One warning on doing searches: “oxygenarian” seems to be gaining ground as a word for people who believe that they can live without food. The ones also called “breatharians.”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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