Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
Newcomb Ball is a game structured similarly to volleyball, but with catching and throwing instead of bumping/hitting. It was invented in 1895 by a woman at Sophie Newcomb College:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb_ball
It has since been eggcornishly reinterpreted as “Nuke ‘Em”, e.g.: http://lets-get-together.com/2015/07/22 … le-family/
This is a very classic sort of eggcorn, as “Nuke ‘Em” seems germane to a game where you’re lobbing a ball at the opponents, while “Newcomb” is obscure.
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Eggcornish, but if it’s purposeful it’s a pun. As has often been pointed out, one man’s pun can be(come) another one’s eggcorn: if you can document somebody who thought it really was Nuke’em Ball and wasn’t aware that that was a joke, you’d have a good case.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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