Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
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Where “conscience” has been replaced by “conscious” it seems to mark a rather more pronounced feeling of trauma associated with the aforementioned guilt, doesn’t it? I suppose we all have a guilty conscience on occasion, but woeth the being that has a guilty conscious(ness) to live with.
~from a fanfiction which I think would probably be best left anonymous.
(“Your conscience is capable of feeling guilty. You’re conscious, on the other hand, is usually said to one who has awoken from a faint or coma.”)
Last edited by terradune (2007-05-20 07:27:15)
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Welcome to the Eggcorn website terradune. We just recently had a discussion about whether the conscience/conscious mixup would qualify as an eggcorn:
subconscience for subconscious (and/or conscience/conscious) by Techwreck Contribute! 4 2007-05-14 08:10:17 by tannerpittman
Your explanation of the proposed eggcorn is somewhat similar, so you’ll find allies on that thread.
Keep in mind that eggcorns are produced with the utterer having no knowledge that he/she has altered the original meaning by way of an unintentional word substitution. So, in the current situation, the person who says “your guilty conscious” must be completely oblivious to the notion “your guilty conscience.” I guess it’s conceivable.
At this point it would take a really convincing example from a Google search to convince me and possibly others. Context clues of an example might prove it out …or even a person’s revelation akin to “I used to think that the term was ‘guilty conscious’...” You never know what a good hunt with Google might dig up!
Last edited by jorkel (2007-05-20 08:33:15)
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There is no shortage of occurrences of “guilty conscious.” I get about 21,300 Google hits.
I can somewhat believe an eggcorn interpretation in the following way: If someone says, “He is guilty, and he is conscious of what he did,” the utterer might make the incorrect inference that the term “guilty conscious” applies. So, I Googled “guilty conscious” with “conscious of” and got 2050 hits. Not all are relevant, but maybe there’s an eggcorn among these. Here are a few we could discuss…
The Human Sacrifice – Google Books Resultby Iris Lynn Russell – 2005 – 492 pages
A guilty conscious can never understand what righteousness is. ... the awesome holiness of God and, in contrast, made him conscious of his own sinfulness. ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0595357873…
Special Dispatch Series – No. 484Do they feel a guilty conscious? We don’t believe so because the national conscious of these [leaders] has died and they can sleep peacefully.” [2] ...
memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP48403 – 37k – Cached – Similar pages
GussetBLOGAs the traffic flew past I started become more and more self conscious of it, ... Maybe it is my guilty conscious that has led me to posting this string of …
blog.gusset.co.uk/labels/Personal.shtml – 13k – Cached – Similar pages
perfect consciousA man with a guilty conscious could not knowingly hurt someone Iago can. ... subjectamp39s mind, he reasoned, which the subject was not conscious of, but . ...
www.megaessays.com/essay_search/perfect_conscious.html – Supplemental Result – Similar pages
Latest NewsBut people need to be conscious of the fact that Sudanese politics is being manipulated … and the destruction of the Southern Sudan feel guilty conscious, ...
www.gurtong.org/ResourceCenter/document … ns_03.html – 12k – Cached – Similar pages
Slashdoc – Panopticism… making the individual conscious of the presence of a hidden onlooker, ... It has proven to be a form of behavior to give us a guilty conscious or the …
www.slashdoc.com/documents/85047 – 19k – Cached – Similar pages
[PDF] The Ghosts of the Past: Latin Literature, the Dead, and Rome’s …File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
Orestes responds, “*Conscience*, for i am conscious of having committed terrible actsâ€. (395–96). The figuration of Orestes’ guilty conscious as a no/sov …
www.ohiostatepress.org/Books/Book%20PDF … Ghosts.pdf – Similar pages
Dream Dictionary, Dream Interpretations, Dreams, Sweet Dreams at …... clear your mind and your conscious of the guilty secret you are holding onto. ... If you are the cheater in your dream, you may have a guilty conscious ...
www.peacefulmind.com/dream_dictionary.htm – 200k – Cached – Similar pages
[DOC] – this is theFile Format: Microsoft Word – View as HTML
Very literally, “For I am conscious of nothing against myself. ... because he does not have a guilty conscious in anything with regard to the Corinthians. ...
76.220.82.30/AmadorBible/BNotes/1Cor/1Cor4/1Cor4_4.doc – Supplemental Result – Similar pages
I have not listed any examples containing the construction “guilty conscious of [one’s actions]”—and they are numerous—but those are probably quite applicable to the discussion as well.
Last edited by jorkel (2007-05-20 09:16:41)
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