Eggcorn Forum

I was reading the liner notes to an album (Re-Tired) by the Akron, Ohio band The Rubber City Rebels when I ran across this:

“Rod and I always kind of bucked heads,” Damage said.

“To buck heads” for “to butt heads” gets hundreds of hits in its various forms (buck, bucked, bucking, etc.) – especially in sports stories. The parallels are pretty clear: both butting and bucking involve sudden, aggressive movement. And as the first few examples below suggest, for some writers the substitution may be influenced by the idea of male deer (bucks) butting heads during mating. Examples:

In what is apparently a common event every hunting season, a pair of deer bucks were found dead after their horns had become locked together. I’m supposing this happens when the bucks are bucking heads in competition for a mate.
http://dtstrainphilosophyblog.blogspot. … dness.html

Hunting Man and two Elk bucking heads and dancers rotating on top.
http://www.cuckoocrazy.com/Animals_Deers_Owls.asp

We bucked heads and locked horns.
http://pnews.org/bio/W.shtml

The arguments start all the way at the top, where snowboarding, a sport that has long bucked heads with the skiing world, was placed under the direction of the Federation Internationale due Ski, skiing’s Switzerland-based worldwide governing body.
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/winter02/ … id=1307273

Payseur bucked heads with the United States Golf Association as a golf coach and was one of the men responsible for the NCAA deciding to stage its own tournament.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/p … 1/50708009