Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
The following exchange is quoted on the website Eavesdrop DC:
Heard last night on Capitol Hill
Guy: I don’t understand, what is “pork roll”?
Jersey Girl: It’s hard to explain…It’s like, if bacon married awesome and they had delicious babies
http://eavesdropdc.blogspot.com/2007/07 … arrel.html————————-
Many people tend to omit or swallow the initial consonant cluster [ba] , especially when speaking quickly.
Last edited by GoNow (2007-07-13 01:40:45)
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Pork roll sounds like a blend of concepts: bankroll + pork barrel (spending).
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Interesting—I hadn’t considered that.
Here’s another instance I found via Google. The author quotes a politician saying that “the state wouldn’t lose out on much-needed funding” and then adds her own translation, followed by a grinning emoticon:
“much needed funding” = pork roll spending… ((grinning emoticon))
http://www.drudgeforum.com/index.php?s= … show=&st=&
Last edited by GoNow (2007-07-14 01:26:22)
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91,300 Google hits for “pork roll.” Many refer to a food product.
I was wondering if people have adopted “pork roll” in place of “pork barrel” because it (the former) is relatively common, and few of us even know what a pork “barrel” is. (The other tendency is to refer to such spending simply as “pork.”)
Overall, this does have the makings of an eggcorn.
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I vaguely remember that I had a post about ‘port barrel’ for ‘pork barrel’ about 2 years ago.
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I’ve found “pork roll” in a few other contexts besides _/spending
“This ‘pork roll’ hides much waste.”
http://www.jregrassroots.org/forums/ind … st&p=57439
“Politicians can and have looted payroll tax funds to pay for thousands of pet pork roll projects …”
http://www.ssdwin.com/millenniummandate.html
”...that’s why the House “pork rolled” it.”
http://www.jregrassroots.org/forums/ind … st&p=57439
“I know the budget is a very larger document without the ‘pork roll.’ ”
http://www.jregrassroots.org/forums/ind … entry57439
We need to stop this “pork rolling.”
http://www.jregrassroots.org/forums/ind … entry57439
“Better to spend the cash on K-Street getting a nice pork roll than actually invest anything…”
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/008846.html
”[West Virginia] politicians want a job in wv politics so they can sit back and pork roll their way back into office time after time…”
http://wvpoliticalsweatbox.blogspot.com … 5347008760
“If you do not pass the “pork roll” omnibus than the government is unfunded…”
http://www.jregrassroots.org/forums/lof … 10133.html
“This is part of the “pork roll” we need to get rid of now.”
Ibid.
Last edited by GoNow (2007-07-14 01:24:36)
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As I was browsing the results on Google for “pork roll”, I noticed that references to New Jersey seemed to appear, depending on the search combination, in at least half of the pages.
Perhaps it is significant, then, that one of the speakers in the Eavesdrop DC quote is a “Jersey Girl.” I guess she is talking about an actual food item that is popular where she comes from. I divide my time between Washington, D.C. and New England, and I’ve never heard of, much less eaten, a “pork roll.” Arcane as it sounds, the “barrel” reference in “pork barrel” seems far more natural to me than “pork roll.”
Looking at the other instances of this eggcorn (see previous post), it seems that one appealing feature of “pork roll” might be that you can reconfigure the phrase so that “roll” becomes a verb. Obviously, this isn’t possible for “pork barrel.” But this is speculation… Any thoughts?
Last edited by GoNow (2007-07-14 02:22:01)
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