Eggcorn Forum

Classic. “Gin up” was equally new to me. Is this eggcornology?

Any time I want to discuss an eggcorn that’s already listed in the database, I do it under “Eggcornology”, which seems like clearly the most appropriate category. Or do you have a different idea about that?

Oh, okay. I noticed Dixon’s pattern of posting in Eggcornology a couple of years back, and I was puzzled by it, but decided it didn’t matter much. And, frankly, I still don’t think it matters very much. And, heck, the “Eggcornology” page is fairly rarely visited, so maybe it’s just nice that somebody is keeping the chair warm over there. That said, Dixon, I don’t see why you shouldn’t post these sorts of comments on Contribute—you always make it clear that you know the eggcorn is already in the Database, so no one can get confused. And they fit a little better in Contribute than they do in “Eggcornology,” where I personally expect a more abstract, “theoretical” discussion that’s widely applicable to a range of reshapings. But ultimately it’s up to you as far as I’m concerned. (If anyone ever wants a thread they started moved to a different page, I can do that, by the way. Occasionally I’ve noticed months/years afterwards that I didn’t act on someone’s request for a move, but that’s due to cluelessness rather than an unwillingness to do so. It only takes a few seconds.)

If Chris ever has a chance to change the layout of the whole site, one of the things I’d like to see is a page on which we could discuss the Database and its existing entries—that would give your posts a more natural home, and it would also allow us a space in which to nuance/challenge/add to the extant Database write-ups. Of course, allowing comments on the Database again would achieve the same thing, but Chris has said that that brings with it a host of other problems.

Thanks for that great link, Dixon, I had no idea. Among the other interesting possible origins identified in there, I liked the expressions for ‘drunk’ from 1881. I was gingered up by “he fills up with bug juice and gets fuller’n a goose”. Would that be the same bug as in jitterbug? Why would they associate drink with bugs in the first place? Something to do with ants and aphids? That aside, how interesting was the link to ‘begin’.

Diverse as the connections are in the Phrases piece, there are yet other suggestions about, especially the idea that “gin up” comes from engine up, by way of “ingenious”.

‘Gin up’ and ‘djinn up’ will be handy.

Before I continue to jack this thread, I’ll try to be relevant for a paragraph.

Burred wrote:

Would that be the same bug as in jitterbug? Why would they associate drink with bugs in the first place? Something to do with ants and aphids?

Interesting—I’d never really thought about why an alcoholic was a jitterBUG. The jitters makes obvious sense as a reference to the DTs. But the bug part is less clear. Maybe this use of bug is related to “bug” as a suffix for someone interested in a particular thing. Since Maeve Maddox over at Daily Writing Tips has drawn attention to eggcorns, let’s send some traffic her way:

Bug as a Suffix
The suffix -bug added to a word can create a noun meaning “a person obsessed with…” Firebug, “a fire-setter” dates from 1841. Shutterbug, “picture-taking enthusiast,” 1940.
litterbug – “irresponsible person who drops trash anywhere” – first recorded 1947, but the verb littering came later, in 1960.
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/hurrah- … lowly-bug/

Of course, “jitterbug” may not work perfectly here given Maddox’s definition since alcoholics aren’t particularly “obsessed with” the jitters per se—but I don’t think that rules out the possibility of a connection. And if litterbugs go around littering, serious alcoholics go around jittering.

“Bug juices” could mean both alcohol and insect honey dew in the 19th century, and contemporary references to “bug juice” on books.google.com certainly link the two with some frequency, but in a very quick search I didn’t find anyone saying explicitly that the slang term for alcohol came from the slang term for honey dew.

The link for “ginned up” at phrases.org was interesting, but I think some of the possibilities there can be ruled out pretty quickly. The “gin” as in “given” seems to me not to work for the simple fact that you’ve got a hard g rather than a soft one (and I see no semantic connection at all). Middle English “gin” for “begin” has a good semantic link, and it’s at least possible a palatalized (i.e., soft) g has survived in some southern dialects of British English—that could probably be checked—but I’d need some evidence the Middle English form has/had dialectal descendants in Modern English.

Okay, back to jacking the thread. Dixon wrote:

For clarity’s sake, someone may want to reword the descriptions under “Contribute” (“Submissions to the Eggcorn Database”) and “Eggcornology” (“Eggcorn questions & answers, and everything in-between”) on the Forum index page to better reflect the intended uses of these sections as you’ve just explained them to me, because as they’re currently worded, they’d impel people to post as I’ve been doing.

Dixon, you may well be right that your approach makes more sense given those headings. I think they DO reflect “intended uses” in that they reflect what Chris intended when she set up this version of the forum in late 2005. But practice seems to have diverged from that original theory; in particular, since contributions almost never make it into the Database anymore, the “Contribute” label just seems like an artifact now, rather than a normative label. For me, it’s just the name of the page on which we talk about specific things we think are eggcorns. But your interpretation is certainly defensible, and as I said before, I consider the choice of pages up to you. The fact that all active threads are visible on the main Forum homepage means that these distinctions don’t matter all that much.

As far as I can tell, I don’t have the power to change the headings for the pages. I can apparently wipe out whole sections of the Forum if I choose to, but I don’t seem to be able to do lots of practical little things like that. And I imagine that’s probably best from Chris’s viewpoint.

On a few very rare occasions, I’ve moved newbies’ pages. But I would never move a regular’s post to another page without a request because that could imply an interpretive decision on my part (“what you’re calling an eggcorn is just a slip”) that I shouldn’t have the right to impose on other regulars.

Edit: Dixon and I were working on long posts at the same time, so I hadn’t seen his last post (or the partial overlap with mine) when I posted.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2011-06-25 14:25:58)

So then apparently, the Eggcorn Database is, with rare exceptions, a sort of petrified archive rather than an ongoing concern?

I’m a bit uncomfortable admitting it so bluntly, but yeah, that seems to be the situation. If you look at the dates on the most recent Database entries, one or two new ones are still sneaking in every year, but even then they tend not to be drawn from the Contribute list here on the forum. I’m not happy about this, but I don’t think it’s going to change in the near future. On the other hand, the Eggcorn Forum has a pretty high Web profile, and it’s not like contributions to it are lost from sight. And if regular movement from Contribute into the Database ever starts up again, then at least we’ve got everything preserved in one easily accessed place.

So, what’s the bottleneck? The Powers That Be have decided that only a couple of people are qualified to distinguish eggcorns from other critters, and they don’t have time to do it?

Well, I can’t speak for TPTB. But that’s pretty close to my own reading of the situation. I’ve actually tried volunteering to “Database” contributions—and I’ve said I’d be happy to work from a list approved by Chris or someone else, so that it’s not just my own choices getting in—but I haven’t been taken up on that. So for the time being the Database is fairly moribund.

“Bug” as in “jitterbug”, “litterbug”, “shutterbug” may result from the same kind of mental/etymological process as “freak” as in “speed freak”, “Jesus freak”, etc. (someone who is extremely interested in a particular subject or activity), although that use of “bug” almost certainly predates “freak”. Interesting to note that, in the examples I can think of, ”-bug” always follows a word ending in ”-tter”.

Pat wrote:

Interesting—I’d never really thought about why an alcoholic was a jitterBUG. The jitters makes obvious sense as a reference to the DTs.

Should I be offended?

Any of you remember the Far Side cartoon with the shady (=“sketchy”)-looking vendor huddled over a collection of bottles labled The Creeps, The Willies, The Jitters, The Fantods, The Heebie-Jeebies etc. ? It’s an interesting little construction; doubtless related to The Measles, The Mumps, The Pocks/Pox, The DTs and etc. and soon and soforth. It’s typically embedded in “It gives me the _s” or (for both sets) “I got the _”, where as the second set (but not the first) occurs in phrases like “come down with the _s” or “she’s suffering from the _s”.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2011-06-26 08:55:40)

David B wrote:

The DTs, in particular, is interesting. But I don’t have full-blown delirium tremens yet, just the occasional tremen.

Yes, as DB was implying, there’s an eggcornical restructuring of sorts going one where the final _-s_ of tremens (a participial singular ending, if I remember my little Latin) is reanalyzed into a quasi-plural like that of mumps, measles , etc. Plenty of evidence that they are plural, at least for some, e.g. the “they/them” and the number of the verb in

The DTs: What They Are and How to Fight Them […] If caught early enough, the DTs are extremely treatable

and many similar cites. If it’s a plural, then tremen must be the noun stem that gets pluralized, and no doubt it means something like “tremor, trembling”. So the one restructuring prompts another. Not tremendous, but cute at least.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2011-06-29 16:55:53)

“Gin up” was equally new to me.

Me too, but not so “gen up” which is a BrEnglish expression meaning to study and become conversant with all the relative facts. It may be an abbreviation of ‘general information’ apparently; if you have the gen, you have the up to date, inside knowledge. I recall, for example, an unusually astute Scot who we referred to as the “Monarch of the Gen”.
And yet I find this from a US editor:

Gin up (or ginning up, or ginned up) is an odd expression to me, something I don’t think I’d heard until I was in my 30s, and then I took it to be both uncommon and strictly British slang.

Puzzling. Just to round off recent ‘gin’ and ‘gang’ references, here’s something on gin gangs. Oh no there isn’t. Can’t forge a link for some reason.

Thanks David. I seem to be peculiarly inept at this new technology malarkey, but I’ll give it a go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_gang