Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
This is definitely not an eggcorn, but I find it interesting. The Disney animated feature Cinderella has a well-known song “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, which has also become a minor competitor with “abracadabra” as a universal magic word. In recent years, though, it has become “Bippity-Boppity-Boo”. I’ve heard it twice on television, once even on a Disney Channel program. I just find it odd that something so firmly fixed would suddenly change like this.
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
Offline
yanogator wrote:
I just find it odd that something so firmly fixed would suddenly change like this.
I don’t. Not when the “acorn” is a nonsense phrase, so that there’s no specific meaning to help fix it in peoples’ minds. And the auditory similarity of the b sound to the p sound and of the d sound to the t sound (especially in light of some dialects wherein t is substituted for d ) makes this substitution unsurprising to me. Add in the musical associations of “bippity-boppity” (as in bop music, scatting, etc.), and I’d say this substitution was nearly inevidaple ;^D
Offline
Definitely magic, but the magic is the embedded phonology. Both spellings are rather complete example of English’s ablaut reduplication, moving from a close front vowel to an open back one. The sequence followed by I-A-O. As in “bric-a-brac,” “chit-chat,” “criss-cross,” “ding-dong,” “knick-knack,” “pitter-patter,” “splish-splash,” “zig-zag,” etc.
Cinderella’s fairy godmother is a good fairy godmother because she respects the deep narrative of her language. If she were an evil fairy godmother, she would have said “boopity-bopity-bip” and turned a carriage into a pumpkin.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline