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Chris -- 2018-04-11
#1 2017-02-25 08:50:34
- kem
- Eggcornista
- From: Victoria, BC
- Registered: 2007-08-28
- Posts: 2853
screaming mammogram
A GP friend of mine sent me this note today:
One of our patients once asked if she had to have a “screaming mammogram,” as opposed to “screening.” Screening mammograms are notoriously uncomfortable (read painful).
The substitution has an eggcornish look, but I can’t see any evidence that the term has actually entered the vocabulary of a subset of speakers. Like the phrase “smilin’ mighty Jesus [spinal meningitis],” it appears to be a widely circulating pun that is passed off as an actual eggcorn.
One writer, I see, confesses to employing the phrase inadvertently, then correcting it. Which would make it a Freudian slip.
The pun “screaming mammogram” has already been picked up by cartoonists:
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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#2 2017-03-03 20:18:04
- burred
- Eggcornista
- From: Montreal
- Registered: 2008-03-17
- Posts: 1112
Re: screaming mammogram
Ouuch. As I evolve slowly to the man-cannon stage of life, I can sympathize.
Diagnostic Tools for evaluation and screening are : breast self-examination (monthly beginning at age 20) , clinical breast examination by a health care provider ( ages 20-39 every 3 years and ages 40 on yearly), screaming mammography (yearly starting at age 40).
https://sites.google.com/site/tritonkrz … ykb/breast
Since screening was there at the beginning of this sentence, you have to think that the screaming was subconscious.
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