Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
For “statute of limitations.” Since you can’t sue when the statute of limitations has run, your cause of action is eliminated. A lawyer on my employment law listserve posted this, among other malapropisms, as something he heard from a client. Definitely an eggcorn. Curiously, this appears in one of the supporting quotations in Ken Lakritz’s discussion of “statue/statute,” but he doesn’t seem to have picked up on it as a separate eggcorn.
Ken’s example apart, I only found one hit on Google, but I’ll bet people say this all the time. Interestingly, the lawyer listed several eggcorns already discussed here, like “old timer’s disease,” “human cry,” and “landblasted.” My favorite on his list was a near-Spoonerism, not an eggcorn at all: “He ran right into me and I suffered a serious blow to my polar flexus.” For the actual linguists hanging out here, how exactly would you explain that one? Obviously no one would say “polar slexus,” the full Spooner. Is “polar flexus” derived from it by some sort of phonetic rule?
I suppose this one from the lawyer’s list is an eggcorn, though, and it is sublime: “You don’t have to be a rock scientist to know that.” Has it been listed here? I forgot to check.
David
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David asked about…
“You don’t have to be a rock scientist to know that.â€
I think when we were discussing variants of the “rocket scientist” phrase in the Forum, we ended up concluding that many of them are idiom blends—or something other than eggcorns. The “rock” example you cite is probably the sole exception. Personally, I’d classify it as an eggcorn if the utterer truly associates a “rock scientist” with smarts—and is unaware that the standard idiom invokes a “rocket scientist.”
By the way, do you have a favorite eggcorn from among those that you have posted in the Forum?
Last edited by jorkel (2007-06-25 20:45:02)
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Well, if you’re thinking about eggcorns for the Database, among my posts I like “ideallic” for “idyllic.” It got a reasonable number of g-hits (10,500), and while it’s not funny, it is definitely as eggcorny as Kansas in August, or Eggust. . .
David
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I concur. I think the ones that should go into the Database next are the ones which are most credible and most widespread. I would certainly put “ideallic” in that category. Any others?
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