Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I suppose it would be just as treacherous to try to walk along the shelves upon which eggs are stored as it would be to walk on the shells themselves! The fear of broken eggs might be the same!
Twitter user @GadSaad seems to think so:
https://twitter.com/gadsaad/status/1453 … 35818?s=21 “social situations and in the quest to not offend an extraordinarily small minority (who of course deserve to live fully dignified lives like anyone else), everyone is walking on egg shelves. Fighting for a world free of bigotry does not imply that we must suppress perfectly …” 7:26 AM · Oct 27, 2021As does Twitter user @NotKavi who seems to have the phrase as their screen name:
https://twitter.com/notkaviAnd this TripAdvisor user’s review:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserRev … lands.html “The staff was very kind and friendly, we traveled with our 5 months old son and the hotel made our stay extremely convenient even with a baby. We got a 2 rooms apartment so when the baby slept we shouldn’t have to walk on egg shelves – and we also received a travel cot where the baby had a good night sleep.” March 2014Offline
I love it! Actually, if it is just the shells, I don’t usually care much if they get smashed, but egg shelves presumably are loaded with eggs still including their innards, so smashing them would make a much bigger mess. As well as that the shelves are farther above the floor, so you fall further and that adds to the mess and even danger.
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disshelved < disheveled is somewhat relevant. Also relevant is the description a sister-in-law used about having touchy teenagers in the house: “It’s like you’re always walking around on bombshells; it’s like there’s a volcano in the house, always threatening to disrupt.”
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Of course, for an “error” to make sense (as these do) is not enough. To be eggcorns they not only have to occur, or even to occur without the perps being aware that they said or wrote something funny, but they need to be standard for them. My s-i-l’s wonderful malaprops were, as far as I know, one-time slips, not something she would always use in such a context. It would be interesting to talk to somebody that says walk on eggshelves repeatedly, and ideally would claim that they thought that was the way to say the phrase.
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The fact that shelves is harder to pronounce and spell than shells does make it more likely that in some part of the perps’ minds it, and not shells , was used not by accident but as the intended/expected word for the phrase.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2022-10-14 18:41:19)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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