Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
<de-lurk>
*N00b alert. Please don’t shoot.*
I just chuckled at “Low and behold the Transformers theatrical trailer” on Michael Bay’s website (witness: http://www.michaelbay.com/blog/files/40 … eb-81.html). Not sure if it’s a typo or deliberate or indeed an eggcorn?
(Google has 1,190,000 hits for “lo and behold” and 650,000 for “low and behold” – some of which refer to a movie, where I assume the deviant spelling is intended.)
Um.
<re-lurk>
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I doubt it’s a typo. This comes across as eggcorn to me.
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“Lo and behold” seems to be a source for a few potential eggcorns. The one already in the Eggcorn Database is “Long behold.” A second one that was pretty well discussed in this Eggcorn Forum is “load and behold:”
“load and behold” for “lo and behold” by riversedge Contribute! 1 2006-11-24 05:39:19 by Peter Forster
...but that one sounds like an intentional reshaping to me (rather than an eggcorn).
The current variation “low and behold” was mentioned here:
Low and behold! by JohnReid Contribute! 0 2006-08-13 06:06:26 by JohnReid
but there isn’t much explanation to accompany this proposed eggcorn. Could someone please explain the new imagery that would allow “low and behold” to make sense (as an eggcorn)? I don’t see it.
When I saw Tanner’s name on a reply, I initially thought he would suggest that “low” might be a spell-checker error gone unnoticed—an insight he has had in the past. On that note, I wonder if there are any spell-checkers that would substitute “low” for “lo” because the latter is deemed to be a rarely-used word.
Last edited by jorkel (2007-05-22 11:46:07)
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Right – well part of the reason I thought those others were spell-checker mistakes was that I just couldn’t imagine someone actually eggcorning them. The main page cites “to name a view” as the mistaken impression of someone who wrote the article “A day in the life of a systems architect,” no less. I’d sooner think that a systems architect relied too much on his spell checker than wrote the nonsensical expression “to name a view” rather than the perfectly logical “to name a few.”
But I digress.
I wouldn’t think “low and behold” is a spell-checker mistake largely because the word “lo” survives MS Word’s spellchecker (rightly so) and because it’s a perfect eggcorn candidate. “Lo” is archaic and makes no sense to many people. Contrariwise, some notion of crouching down low and beholding or something of that nature could come across as logical to the untrained ear.
Which is why I would say “eggcorn” for this one.
Last edited by tannerpittman (2007-05-30 12:19:51)
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