Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
When I first heard this, (spoken by a tourist guide in Australia) my head was filled with the image of a large vat full of hearts being heated over a fire, while someone with a big ladle carefully skimmed off the fat. Since then, I’ve used the term affectionately myself, but its spontaneous use seems to be growing.
For example:
“Some have a short journey packed with heart-rendering challenges.”
page 168
The Silence of the Heart: Reflections of the Christ Mind,
By Paul Ferrini, Heartways Press (January 1996)
And – quite astoundingly – on the COVER of this book:
Samira and Samir: The Heart Rendering Story of Love and Oppression in Afghanistan
By Siba Shakib. Published by Arrow; New Ed edition (31 May 2005)
Naturally, Dan Quayle used it:
“The destruction, it is just very heart-rendering.”
San Francisco earthquake
Newsweek magazine, 30th October 1989
It certainly enjoys widespread use on the internet:
On church websites:
“Heart Rendering Stories and Poems”
http://www.redondohills.org/goodnight.html
and many many others.
Anyone got any gems they’d like to share?
Rachel
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Nicely done RachelMcL. I previously considered a possible eggcorn of “heart rending” on this forum, but wasn’t fully satisfied with what I located: “heart WRENCHING.” Your find is far better.
I don’t know if the link below is active, but I’ll cite it anyway…
Heart WRENCHING? (rending?) by jorkel
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This has been suggested twice before. Here are the links:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?pid=1024
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?pid=1531
The first one is a spirited exchange between Fishbait and a poster who hasn’t visited in a while. Along the way, FIshbait offers what I think is a concisely elegant explanation of some of the more highfalutin malapropisms that we occasionally encounter here: “On the level of vocabulary, there’s an uneasy feeling that plain language is inelegant. The cure is usually to add syllables [...].†A great observation.
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All apologies. As Pat’s second citation indicates, I must have had a conversation with another poster about “heart rendering”—which I did not even recollect until Pat posted it.
At any rate, I clearly like the eggcorn…
...so much that I’ll marvel at it each time I hear it for the “first” time!
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I heard “heart rendering” used on TV today and out of curiosity I did a search.
I thought you might like this book – Samira and Samir: The Heart Rendering Story of Love and Oppression in Afghanistan
I can’t make out the cover but it would be interesting to know if the phrase is on it.
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I found a larger image of the book cover on the publisher’s website: http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/ja … 0099466449 The cover actually does have the standard “heartrending,” but the person who wrote the Amazon image guide has used the eggcorn “heartrendering.”
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Mark Liberman—the linguistics prof. who started this whole “eggcorns thing”—weighs in on “heart-rendering” on today’s Language Log. He’s a bit skeptical about the phrase’s eggcornicity, but doesn’t quite dismiss it altogether. His post is here:
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