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Chris -- 2018-04-11
This is just too cute. Student art work is displayed in the halls of the elementary school where I sometimes work. In addition to a title, students list their materials on a card. One first grader noted her drawing used, “paper, crayon, and shop bee.” Shop bee? The I said it aloud. Sharpie! When I told this to my cousin, who is from a family of language-minded people, he told me about eggcorns, so here I am!
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“Too cute,†sure enough.
But what do shops, or bees, have to do with it? (In a first grader’s mind, of course.) Do they have a shop class where the make things like they do in art class? Do bees leave some kind of mark where they have walked (as opposed to flying)? or what? If it doesn’t make some kind of sense, it isn’t a full-fledged eggcorn.
Welcome to the forum!
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Hmmm, this was a first grader phonetically spelling Sharpie, using two words they know, “shop” and “bee”. I suppose it depends on the definition of an eggcorn (which has nothing to do with egg nor corn, bearing out my inclusion of “shop bee” as an eggcorn).
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You are entirely right that it depends on the definition of an eggcorn. But I (and the others on the forum who have discussed it) would disagree with the idea that egg and corn have nothing to do with eggcorn (which was, of course, a mis-analysis of acorn ). Rather an acorn, once you take the cap off it, is shaped very much like an egg, and it is like an egg, and even more like a corn kernel or other seed, in its function as the locus of embryonic life. (In fact acorn etymologically probably has corn ‘seed’ in it.) So the people that call an acorn an eggcorn are doing the same sort of thing as your first grader, only they hit on an analysis that makes sense, so they hang onto it and it becomes standard for them.
It is for this reason that most mondegreens aren’t very good eggcorns. “I led the pigeons to the flag”, or “Surely good Mrs. Murphy (shall follow me all the days of my life)” just don’t make very good sense in context, even though they are funny, and in some degree clever, mis-analyses of the standard form that was originally said.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2017-06-03 15:24:43)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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So, what would you call shop bee, then? Mondegreen reminds me of my Neapolitan aunt, who I misheard saying “a month ago” as “a Montague”. Thank you for enlightening me on all this. It just goes to show, whatever on is interested in, there’s someone else out there pondering the same stuff. It’s nice to have time to playfully look at the world.
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Myself, I mangle pop song
lyrics all the time. I heard this in Peter, Paul and Mary’s “I Dig Rock and Roll Music”:”. . . and if I really say it, the rainy oboes play it. . .”
Of course the actual lyric is “and if I really say it, the radio won’t play it.” Now, I was a music major, and I just thought “rainy oboes” was a comment on Muzak® (elevator music).
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In songs and poetry we tolerate certain kinds of weird collocations much more freely, and rainy oboes might really make sense there. If you really analyzed it this way, and established it as standard for yourself with this meaning, I’d probably call this an eggcorn. It’s still different from the standard ones for the category, though, in that it’s unlikely to be used (or particularly useful) outside of the context of the original song (more like the prototypical mondegreen in that way), but that’s a matter of degree. I can see it gaining some currency in your speech and others’ who are influenced by you, even beyond that context.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2017-05-08 11:33:05)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I said “shop bee” aloud. I can see how this might be a textual representation of how “sharpie” would be pronounced in the Boston area. (This is based on my own observations over the last 45 years, not on some media-spawned concept.) Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s not outside the realm.
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I agree that the pronunciation “shop bee†for sharpie is well within the bounds of what is tolerated for mondegreens / malapropisms / eggcorns / puns, but for me to be comfortable calling it an eggcorn I want a meaning connection: it has to make sense. I’m not saying no such connection can be imagined (we as a community of speakers are much more creative than I as an individual am), but I just don’t see it (yet).
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I must agree with DavidTuggy: while “shop bee” for “sharpie” meets the pronunciation requirement for an eggcorn, the meaning connection doesn’t seem to be there. I’d just call it an amusing malaprop. Those too are welcome on the Eggcorn Forum, though ideally not in the Contribute! category, as that is supposed to be reserved for items likely to be actual eggcorns. But I did get a chuckle out of “shop bee”. Kids say the darnedest things!
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