Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
This was seen on Yahoo! Answers (on more than one occasion)
What’s interesting is that “kick it to the curb” is a slang expression meaning “get rid of it” usually referring to another person (“it” being substituted with an engendered pronoun) bringing to mind curbside garbage pickup or curbside street-cleaners. Therefore, kicking something “to the curve” makes little sense but illustrates how the listener can reinterpret a phrase.
I do maintain that the easiest definition of Eggcorns is “something that makes it clear the person speaking the phrase has only HEARD the phrase, rather than seen it written.”
Because seeing something written, even once, will often clear up the misconceptions of interpretation. It is obvious that anyone who writes/says “for all intentive purposes” has never actually seen the correct phrase written, because once seen, it is clear and obvious what the meaning is.
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Welcome to the Eggcorn website. The curve/curb eggcorns seems to be a very frequent find. Here are a few more sightings posted here in the Forum…
curve vs curb by urgen Contribute! 2 2006-12-22 20:51:25 by urgen
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Ahead of the curb by Wordworking Contribute! 2 2006-12-11 15:15:05 by Wordworking
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“CURVE” vs curb one’s appetite (enthusiasm) by jorkel Contribute! 1 2006-08-13 02:36:14 by jorkel
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“learning curb” for ‘learning curve’ by svolatile Contribute! 1 2006-04-22 03:26:17 by Richard Carroll
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‘curve your enthusiasm’ for ‘curb your enthusiasm’ by klakritz Contribute! 0 2006-03-03 10:48:53 by klakritz
Last edited by jorkel (2007-06-05 12:20:47)
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Hey, Jorkel—you beat me to it. I was compiling the same list while you posted yours. I’ll go ahead and post it again since I’ve got live links:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=1387
[“Curve vs. curb” by urgen]
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?pid=2435
[“Ahead of the curb” by Wordworking]
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … p?pid=1433
[“Way ahead of the curb” by tiny banquet committee]
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=641
[“Curve one’s appetite” by Jorkel]
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?pid=618
[“Learning curb” by svolatile with “Learning kerb” by Richard Carroll]
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=323
[“Curve one’s enthusiasm” by klakritz]
Last edited by patschwieterman (2007-06-05 12:46:35)
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I would disagree a bit that once people have seen a word or phrase in writing they automatically correct their spelling or interpretation. I’ve known a number of people who use eggcorns and other malapropisms repeatedly and who haven’t changed their use of them after being exposed to the “correct” word or phrase.
Some people just don’t seem to have the attention to detail to really notice or care, and in others habit is too strong. Still others just want to go along with the herd, and if an eggcorn is used in their family or peer group they keep using it even when told outright that it’s “incorrect.” Some will keep using them even after having moved to a new area and being around people who never use them.
This applies to things besides eggcorns. I know of people who grew up using the “Massachussetts Negative Positive” “so don’t I” who now live on the west coast where nobody uses it, and they still do.
When I first encountered a group of people who said “real-a-tor” and pointed it out, I was essentially told “Well, that’s how WE say it.” The same held for a family name of mine, Xavier. Some people who have lived in the same small town as my Xavier relatives for close to 100 years insist on pronouncing it “Eggs-zavier” even though they’ve been told that that’s not how the family pronounces it – they respond “well that’s how I say it.”
(In my opinion the only thing that should determine how a person’s name is pronounced is how they WANT it pronounced.)
One of my pet peeves is “hot water heater.” You don’t stand around the cold water cooler at work talking, right? It’s just a water heater. When you buy them that’s what they say on the box. But nobody I’ve ever known who asked why I don’t say “hot water heater” has ever changed when I explained my reasoning.
My mother’s ex-husband still insisted on saying “K-Mark,” “Star Track,” and “bi-script tool” even after seeing the correct words in print.
Most people are very conservative about these things… they take them very personally. Its like asking them to change a way of speaking is an attack on their very person.
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I think Craig makes some very good points. Even when my students are supposed to be quoting passages from literary texts exactly, they still manage to introduce into them the types of “non-standard,” colloquial constructions they use in speech.
I’d also like to make a different point in regard to smibbo’s original post. I don’t think anyone on the forum would deny that “mishearing” often plays a key role in the genesis of eggcorns. (I put “mishearing” in quotations because it’s often not the act of hearing itself but rather the act of analysis that follows hearing that produces a nonstandard word or phrase.) But I think lots of eggcorns and malaprops take on a life of their own in print. Over the last few years, we’ve discovered many that get tens of thousands of hits on Google. And once a form reaches a certain level of penetration in writing, it becomes a “meme” that can reproduce itself through print. A good example is the phrase “viscous circle.” It gets 16,000 raw ghits, but what’s really striking is how often it’s used in governmental and academic circles. Highly literate, well educated people are clearly passing it around among themselves, and it now appears occasionally in edited texts from reputable publishing houses—which can only reinforce a sense of its legitimacy.
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patschwieterman wrote:
(I put “mishearing” in quotations because it’s often not the act of hearing itself but rather the act of analysis that follows hearing that produces a nonstandard word or phrase.)
Exactly. The eggcorn “beckon call” is a good example. People hearing “beck and call” may assume that it’s beckon call because that just makes more sense to them… and in fact may be “correcting” what they’ve heard others say.
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Ah… I think some of the insistance upon keeping a homophonic “mistake” (Once it’s kept with full knowledge, I think we can agree it is no longer a mistake) has to do with stubborn disbelief that the listener/speaker could be wrong. Additionally, some of the stubbornness is due to a sense of “rightness” in the mind of the listener/speaker.
What I meant to stress, actually, was that when using such phrases in print, people do tend to self-correct when presented with the proper phrasing and spelling however speaking, I think, tends to bring a different reaction.
My important point was more about the easiest definition rather than describing people’s reactions. My personal and social circles are mostly made up of English-lovers; readers and writers, thus any corrections are welcomed (if with some embarrassment) and taken to heart.
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Oh and I apologize for submitting a duplicate but I promise I did try the search function first! Quite likely I am not using the correct syntax.
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smibbo wrote:
Oh and I apologize for submitting a duplicate but I promise I did try the search function first Quite likely I am not using the correct syntax.
Search has been very hit and miss for me. Pat once suggested doing a google search with your eggcorn AND the actual word “eggcorn” or some other way to make sure it narrows it down to this site. That’s worked well for me.
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I’ve actually been having better luck with the search button recently.
I just tried it for “curb,” and it worked. Forgive me if the rest of this sounds condescending, but I’m just trying to make sure we’re doing the same thing. I clicked on the “Search” button at the top of this page, and then when the next page appeared, I entered “curb” under “Keyword search” (without the quotes, though for a single word it shouldn’t make any difference). I got back all of the citations Jorkel and I brought up (plus one in which “curb” wasn’t the main focus).
If that doesn’t work for you, the problems with Search are a little more puzzling than I thought.
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I stumbled upon this one today:
As I started to move again, one of them started to step off the curve and was making rude gestures of jerking off on me as I passed him.
Nextdoor post
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