Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Google counts on Sept. 24, 2006
183,000 “liquored up”
6320 “LICKERED up”
Analysis by Joe Krozel
“Liquored up” is a colloquial expression meaning drunk. Unrelated to this is the notion that when someone enjoys something (either literally or figuratively) they might “lick it up”—like a urge-driven dog laping up an enjoyable spill. Hence, one might hear the former phrase (liquored up) and think of the latter in the morphology: “lickered up.”
Examples:
A joke which is not blasphemous or obscene Correspondent:: nenslo …One day Ex President George Bush Senior gets all lickered up on moonshine whiskey and starts in abeatin his wife and raising all kinds of ruckus. ...
www.subgenius.com/bigfist/FIST2004-1/ja … scene.html – 15k – Cached – Similar pages
Infidel Bloggers Alliance: A Tipping PointSome poor guy got himself all lickered up and then spray painted some impolite remarks on the door. He was arrested, of course, and a few days later a bunch …
ibloga.blogspot.com/2006/03/tipping-point.html – 42k – Cached – Similar pages
The Good, the Bad and Alone in the Dark :: thetyee.caI can identify with the drunks in the audience who had to get lickered up to laugh at Uwe Boll. If it weren’t for 2 bottles of wine, I wouldn’t have been …
thetyee.ca/Entertainment/2005/02/04/TheGoodTheBadAloneintheDark/ – 42k – Sep 23, 2006 – Cached – Similar pages
OH THE MEMORIES!!!!! – Topic Powered by eve communitybut on a good note we have started to get lickered up and are having parties at night so i hope you will make the next one Valentine …
community.channel4.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5740097014/m/4840099526/p/1 – 131k – Cached – Similar pages
Letter Author: RichEmery – Salon… of “Fourteen hours” that Armstrong’s report of Cheney’s later cocktail back at the house somehow puts a hole in the Cheney-was-lickered-up speculation. ...
letters.salon.com/62d9c1350c49d005a946de81aa9d1805/author/index15.html – 29k – Cached – Similar pages
Backpacker Forums: We were wondering when the whiners would start …Once , when I was lickered up on moonshine that I bought from my cousin / daughter / girlfriend I went behind the Chevy truck I had on blocks in the yard …
forums.backpacker.com/thread.jspa?forumID=6&threadID=52108&messageID=706024 – 250k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
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I’ve often seen “lickered up,” and always assumed it was not a mistake, much less an eggcorn, but “eye dialect”—a spelling meant to suggest the illiteracy or casual diction of the speaker, but which actually represents the everyday pronunciation of the learned and unlearned alike.
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Fishbait, I like your explanation, and just look at all the categories we have to sort through: eggcorns, malapropisms, idiom blends, eye dialect, snowclones, puns, and more. I wonder if there has been much discussion about eye dialects among the linguists. It’s probably worth tracking down at some point.
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I agree that that it’s “eye dialect.” In the early days of country music, record publishers often indulged in eye dialect in order to convey the idea that the music was made by semi-literate “country” people.
Examples:
Callahan Brothers, “Corn Licker Rag,” 1934.
Fiddlin’ John Carson, “John Makes Good Licker,” 1928.
Emmett Miller Georgia Crackers, “The Licker Taster,” 1930.
These can be found at:
The Online 78 rpm Discographical Project
http://settlet.fateback.com/
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