Eggcorn Forum

I think this is a really thoughtful and judicious list that does a good job of balancing very common eggcorns and those that are frequently submitted against those that are less obvious but of great interest in themselves. And whether intentionally or not, you do a pretty evenhanded job of spreading out the credit for finds. I also like the fact that you’ve got a number of my all-time favorites here—the lovely “flamingo dancers,” the unbelievable-but-documentable “dire rear,” and your own wonderfully ghoulish “scalped potatoes.”

I think everybody might submit a different list, but this seems to me an excellent starting point for discussion. I was thinking that I might also submit a random list of some of my favorites rather than those I think should be prioritized.

“Windshield factor” is already in the Database. And I think Nigel Pond was the first to suggest “torturous path.” And, um, I may have beaten you to “lean on a property.” And no doubt we’ll discover that Ken Lakritz actually deserves earliest credit for something…. But those are quibbles.

I bet that there are people who are now regulars on the forum who don’t know what Ken Lakritz was referring to in that last post. If you go to the old “Contribute” page here http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/contribute/
and then scroll down about halfway, you’ll hit the end of the old “Comments” section that was supplanted by this forum. If you’ve never visited this part of the site, brace yourself—there are 746 comments to look through. Plenty of gems there.

Thank you all for the positive feedback so far. There’s so much good stuff out there that didn’t get on the initial list of 50+. (My starting list exceeded 200, and Pat pretty well summarized my intention at evenhandedness and the like). Please bring forth your own favorites. If you’re pressed for time, even a Top 10 list carries sway.

At this point, I’d like to hear from Peter and Craig as well.

Craig might let us know which of his own are his favorites, and maybe they can be worked in a little higher. Since he’s an active contributor, I’d like to see him get recognition with an entry in the top 10. Otherwise, he might be waiting a long while before any of his enter the Database.

I owe a big apology to Peter because I had forgotten that so many of his Eggcorns are based on British English usage. I’m in no position to judge what usages might be mainstream on his side of the Atlantic, and I might have jumped past a few of his eggcorns for that reason. Perhaps Peter or Chris could insert an apt one or two into the list.

Sorry for any unintended slights to anyone.

Last edited by jorkel (2007-06-20 16:58:42)

No need to invoke the Cupertino Effect in order to explain “pompous grass”—“pompous” and “pampas” are exact homophones for millions of Americans (including me and, I think, much of the populatiion of Cupertino, CA). Here’s the Merriam Webster pronunciation information for both words (the ampersand stands for the schwa):

Main Entry: pompous
Pronunciation: ‘päm-p&s

Main Entry: pampa
Pronunciation: ‘pam-p&, ‘päm-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural pampas /-p&z, -p&s/

I think I skipped over “bear of bad news” in the haste of making split-second decisions; I seem to recall individuals still not thinking it was credible, but I liked it a lot. I just might add it to the list and let the gatekeepers decide—unless anyone is vehemently opposed to it.

By the way, booboo, I’m sure you can see your “48 continuous states” is on the list. If you felt you had an even stronger contender, please speak up. Or, if you’d like to sort through all 55 pages of Forum eggcorns and prepare a favorites list, you’re welcome to do that as well. I wish somebody would because I feel my list has lots of holes/oversights in it.

Last edited by jorkel (2007-06-21 08:03:07)

Peter’s had a lot of less-than-mainstream posts, but there are a few gems among his finds. Here are some that we might take a closer look at:

Google hits:
130,000 “cornel corn” (48 “cornel of corn”)
121,000 “excelerate”
2770 tiraid
1020 “haughty-taughty”
821 “the just of it” (and 997 “the jest of it” ... suggested by booboo)

“Restbit” was mentioned a couple/three times in the forum, and it just barely missed the cutoff of the list I posted. (Multiple independent mentions of the same eggcorn always bodes well with me, so I’m not opposed to moving it up in the list). I sure hope the gatekeepers have an efficient way of finding out who first uncovered these various eggcorns.

Just to clarify a bit, booboo; I’m not linked with this website in an official capacity, so there’s really no need to thank me for anything. The real hard work is done by the gatekeepers who enter the eggcorns into the Database. For my part, I just try to make fair and rational recommendations, but it’s the gatekeepers who will have the final say.

I’ve been thinking about Dadge’s last question a lot in the last week because I’ve just turned up a number of malaprops and eggcorns that have never been reported here, but have been noted on other sites on the Web. Last night I posted on (the non-eggcorn) “reseeding hairline” which Katie Scarvey of the Salisbury Post had beaten me to, and I’ve got a number of others coming “down the pipe” in the next few days if I find the time.

Obviously we’re never going to be able to identify the first person who realized that a certain word or phrase was an interesting lexical error. Often when you’re eggcorn-hunting, you’ll turn up all sorts of intentional puns based on your target word, and it’s instantly clear that lots of other people have noticed it before you did. But I think the important thing is whether or not others have specifically and correctly identified a word/phrase as an “eggcorn.” If they’ve used that word, then that has to be acknowledged, and the passage should be cited or at least linked to in the Database article.

But that raises a problem. We here on the Eggcorns Forum have the quixotic and impossible goal of identifying every eggcorn in the language. As a result, we don’t want people to feel that a find isn’t worth writing up just because they discover that, say, Damien Hall of the American Dialect Society reported the substitution of “hoist” for “foist” last year on another site. (Yes, I’m working on the “hoist/foist” writeup.) Members should have at least a small incentive to keep bringing every eggcorn they run across to the attention of the Forum. So if an EF member writes up an eggcorn post that cites Damien Hall and the eggcorn then gets accepted into the Database, I think there should be some way of acknowledging that EF post in the Database article. Admittedly, this could lead people to go plunder, say, Language Log posts to come up with eggcorns that aren’t in the Database yet (there are tons of them at LL), but that doesn’t seem to me a big deal as long as everyone honestly cites their sources. Also, people who identify eggcorns on other sites often offer little or no analysis, so the EF post might usefully add to the understanding of the eggcorn.

Two years ago, this just wasn’t much of a problem. Everyone who was eggcorn-hunting online then was either a Language Log reader or someone who hung out at this site. If you ran across an eggcorn, you were probably the first person to notice it. Now the eggcorn concept has spread so widely that the Muggles are often beating us at our own game. But that’s okay—it’s a big language and we need all the help we can get.

Pat