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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2016-07-28 13:23:04

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

anger << vinegar

My daughter is transcribing some interviews she did as part of her dissertation. One of her interviewees opined “you can catch more bees with honey than with anger.”

The proverb is “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Over the last three decades, however, there has been a significant jump in the alternate (and more biologically correct—many species of flies love vinegar) idiom “you can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.”

The replacement of “vinegar” with “anger” is an eggcornical touch. I can only find four examples of it on the web, two with “bees” and two with “flies:”

Bees:

http://www.palladiumaddict.net/AddictFo … hp?t=39469
http://whitewizardspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/10/anger.html

Flies:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comment … rs_in_the/
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid= … 3221&hl=en

and one, oddly enough, with “bears:”

http://www.autoedms.com/cgibin/ubbcgi/u … 1&t=000076

There are another three web examples of “with honey than anger” that may be allusions to this proverb.

In short, not really established enough to count as a full-blown eggcorn. But one to watch.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#2 2016-07-28 18:42:13

Dixon Wragg
Eggcornista
From: Cotati, California
Registered: 2008-07-04
Posts: 1375

Re: anger << vinegar

Of course, many here on the Forum who are a bit more demanding than you and I would insist that the pronunciation similarity between “anger” and “vinegar” is insufficient for eggcornicity.

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