Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Originally ran across this one on the GoArmy.com discussion boards. Kind of funny I think, since the imagery being peed on by someone gets across the idea of a peon nicely.
“Yeah… I’m a Medical Assistant, but… eh well I was just a pee on for the doctor. I don’t regret having went to school to become one, but… I want to do more than clean up after the doctor. I wanna get down & dirty! Haha.”
https://forums.goarmy.com/forums/messag … 3941#33941
Obviously this one’s going to be hard to google, but googling “a pee on” yielded at least this one result:
”... which is why in the end they end up loosing their job or evolving into a pee-on for the rest of their life.”
http://www.joannemcneil.com/weblog/wp-commentsrss2.php
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Greetings, czoller, and wellcome to the website. Seems you’ve got the gist/jest/just of how eggcorns work. I found a couple of examples under “lowly pee on” that seem to illustrate what you’re getting at:
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Posts: 25. Awesome work… I as several thousand other folks are stunned by your work… Just a lowly pee on’s quick unworthy opinion… foleypro is offline …
www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=047113 – 138k
a situatiion like this is a very risky business situation. but I am just a lowly pee-on photographer getting my feet wet in the biz so what do I know. ...
photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00C3JX – 33k
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There were 66 hits under that phrase. I especially like the last one, since he was also getting his feet wet. There is a challenge extracting phrases like these from the multitude of those concerning a particular fetish. But, it can be done. I got 3 for “humble pee on”, 26 for “worthless pee on”
Hey, here it goes:
800 for “us pee ons” and 199 for “we pee ons”- all of which are used as you postulated.
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guess that we pee-ons in the general public should not question authorities and are not entitled to question authorities in matters such as this. ...
www.topix.net/forum/city/berthoud-co/TH5H77CB7PNMMT5E5 – 48k
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The second-to-last example, the one about “us pee ons”, I think has a good possibility for being an eggcorn because the author clearly wants to short-hand his words a much as possible, so I think he would have used “peon” if he had known it. Sure, to some utterers “pee on” may be a purposeful play on words, but, just as surely, the first time someone hears “pee on” or “peon”, who doesn’t know what a peon is, it makes classic eggcorn sense to them to substitute the words, and innocently apply the imagery of being peed on to convey the sense of debasement of the less fortunate by the powerful. Pardon my french, but being “shit on” is commonly used in this manner by those who don’t mind cursing.
Sorry to go on so long, I just thought that your suggesting was worth looking into further. It’s a bit of a delicate matter, but I don’t mind. It sounds like a good eggcorn. What say ye, fellow hunters?
Last edited by booboo (2007-07-16 21:51:31)
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At my college we used to call the 1st-year students “pee-on freshmen” but it was said as a joke, trying to be clever.
I think that when people use it innocently, though, it’s a good egg-corn. It also adds meaning by really vividly illustrating the lack of respect that people feel they are getting when they call themselves peons.
polyglots of the world, unite ~ we have nothing to lose but our accents!
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A confession from someone called (or at least handled?) Lisa Guitar Komoroski. I don’t know where Lisa wrote it; one of my sons-in-law reported it on our family forum.
Yes, I think this [eggcorn production / recognition?] happens to everyone. It’s fun when it does. I learned a few months ago that peon is a real word and not just a slang phrase spelled “pee on”. I understood when the word was used and knew how to apply it appropriately myself but I really thought it was a slang phrase, not a dedicated word. I must have only ever heard it spoken & never seen it in print.
I think this is a nice example of how the same structure can be a joke/pun for some and a true eggcorn for others.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2022-03-29 08:56:15)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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