Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I encountered this one in an email music discussion yesterday:
Aurally I realized what Anton was doing was trying to revive both of them in his own heroin sheik way…
There was a brief discussion of “heroin sheik” here a few years ago, and the Eggcorn Database has “sheik” for “chic”, more generally, on the list. I thought I’d look for the converse: “chic” for “sheik”. Both “arabian chic” and “chic of araby” yielded lots of Google hits that were fashion terms (and in most cases, puns too). Trying to come up with a googling term that’d yield some unambiguous eggcorns if any exist, I tried “an arab chic”. Most of those hits were misspellings of “chick”, but I did get these three unambiguous “chic” for “sheik” substitutions:
...those are the very words that required me to give $10 million back to an Arab chic or prince.
UNDERCOVER AGENT POSING AS AN ARAB CHIC, GAVE HIM $250,000 CAPTURED BY VIDEOTAPE.
I will never forget the article in our local newspaper about an Arab “chic” who was visiting the area.
Eggcorns or just meaningless substitutions? You be the judge.
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At the Summer Institute of Linguistics sessions at the U of North Dakota years ago they used to have a room, self-consciously called the Boutique, where used or unwanted items could be left for others to browse through and take as they wanted. (A sort of goodwill store, for those who know the term.)
.
One summer somebody came up with a slogan for advertising the service:
Little Boutique has lots of chic.
Still gives me pleasure to think of it.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Occurred to me to wonder about the etymology of Little Bo-Peep’s name. Apparently there was a children’s game called “Bo-Peep”, from the 16th century (mentioned in Lear I:iv), probably a peeking (peeping) game since being pilloried was sometimes referred to as being sent to play bo-peep through the pillory. Of course Mother Goose probably chose the name because it rhymed with “sheepâ€.
fwiw.
Also fwiw, in case any of you were not aware of it, some people pronounce boutique like bo-teek, rather than boo-teek.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Here’s one I stumbled upon recently:
Our dryer, which had lots of character and was shabby sheik to put it kindly, just broke and I can’t afford a new one
https://groups.freecycle.org/group/Sant … takens=off
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