Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
We’ve discussed aspects of the peak/peek/pique trio in a number of places (e.g. here , here , here and of course in Paul Brians’ invaluable list ).
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I have run into peak < peek several times lately in contexts that seem propitious for an eggcornish interpretation.
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(Less clearly eggcornish)
Do you have anything up on trial somewhere I could get a peak at it?
If your gas man has shifty eyes, make him wait outside while you put away anything he might find offensive! And you might want to stay with him while he’s checking your furnace, to make sure he’s not sneaking peaks into your closets and desk drawers.
(More eggcornish: something projecting into a space. The sun and moon are especially likely to peak vertically, like a mountain peak.)
A tiny slither of the moon is peaking through. [< sliver ]
She awoke just as the sun was peaking up over the window
A few moments later a timid head peaked into the front door of Wild Iris.
Something caught his eye among the remaining leaves and it made him smile. Curled up fearfully, but beginning to peak out its nose, was a hedgehog.
You jumped when you heard Natasha’s voice, her head peaked into your room, her dark red hair framing her face. “Yeah…” you sighed.
his head peaked into the doorway
This last example was in an excellently written story read in a writers’ group I attended last night. When I questioned it, the author and others in the group immediately said that it was just a misspelling, which I suppose means either a typo or a non-meaning-related malaprop or something of the sort. I’m still not convinced. I didn’t think (in the few seconds we discussed it) to point out that you generally peek with your eyes, not your head, and that that scene was described from the viewpoint of the person looked at when the head impinged on the doorway rather than that of the one whose head impinged. In any case, it makes good sense to me to understand “peaking” as a kind of abrupt projection into a space. If others take it so, either as speaker/authors or as readers or both, it seems to me to be a pretty good eggcorn.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2022-09-28 12:57:51)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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peer/pier is notably parallel to this.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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