Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
brouhaha – 1,800,000 ghits
brewhaha – 266 ghits
There’s not much between these two really; they’re both hubbub and uproar, but the eggcornish one contains alcohol. Some ‘brewhaha’ is obviously wordplay, but I believe there may be a genuine and entirely understandable misapprehension here. Hearing this word ‘brew’ followed by ‘ha-ha’ certainly suggests, to me at least, a species of drunken revel…
I am often involved in a ruckus and occassionally a brewhaha, but I normally have enough sense to extricate myself before things escalate into a fracas. ...
oneear.blogspot.com/2006/05/on-being-battered.html – 65k – Supplemental Result – Cached
Imagine, being in a bar with friends, everyone is drunk, it starts to turn into a brewhaha, after awhile, everyone starts to talk in trends, slowly, ...
www.peakoil.com/gate.html?name=Forums&f … art=0&p… – 27k – Supplemental Result – Cached
One of my LST friends (who I have never met in person), emailed me and wanted to attend a BrewHaHa in order to meet all of us. He said his wife thought it …
kitconn.blogspot.com/2007/01/love-is-in-air-no.html – 41k – Supplemental Result – Cached
The fact is it’s a cool enough place to go after work and have a brewhaha and a couple pretzels before you go home. 09/22/2006. Bookmark Send To A Friend …
www.yelp.com/user_details_reviews_self? … gestart=10 – 57k – Supplemental Result – Cached
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” a Brewhaha and a couple of pretzels”, wow. I think that example kind of sums up your point, Peter. That man must definitely be looking forward to cheering himself up for cocktail hour! You know, perhaps it bears drawing attention to how an eggcorn gets its merit. When there’s a million g-hits, it’s a no-brainer. But on some of these gems there are relatively few occurences in the wild, yet, despite that they sometimes leave a very clear(and entertaining) path to how they came to be. In this case there seems to be a very strong link between drinking/brawling/hubbub (as often occurs in real life, and thus the psyche) and that link exposes itself in the spelling and use of the word. Thanks for a good laugh!
Last edited by booboo (2007-06-25 22:16:40)
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This one is outstanding. It strikes me the same way that “cold slaw” did when it first entered the Forum: one of those low-lying fruits that everyone just seemed to overlook for so long.
I like the fact that there are TWO elements of imagery reshaping here: “Brew” and “ha ha.” (I give broad latitude to the imagery of “ha ha” because drunk people sometimes do find pleasure in things like a ruckus).
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some of those could be intentional puns (for example, the capitalized BrewHaHa could easily be an organized event at a bar, or I can imagine a frat or college organization—is LST an institute of learning?—naming their party that).
And in fact, i found a reference to the Fourth Annual BrewHaHa in September of 2006 (tickets were $25). And a coffee shop. And a comedy festial in Colorado Springs.
But I’m betting lots of them are true eggcorns.
Perhaps fueled by the existence of the intentional puns?
Last edited by TootsNYC (2007-06-26 17:19:22)
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TootsNYC points out:
Perhaps fueled by the existence of the intentional puns?
That’s an excellent point that I too have struggled with in the past. I think I concluded that the eggcorn probably should originate with the unaltered idiom, but the implicit point is this: We (eggcorn hunters) have absolutely no way of knowing for sure!
Last edited by jorkel (2007-06-26 13:37:20)
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Well, here we are almost 3 years later, and I’m resurrecting this old thread to post the variation on this theme that I just found in an Amazon discussion group:
“Would love to read these stories but am getting sufficiently irritated with the legal brew-ha over this mess…”
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