Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I particularly like this one because I found it in a scholarly work (how are the mighty fallen!). A Google search turns up others, e.g. this one in the preface of a book published by Cambridge University Press:
“While this volume has been in preparation, we have discovered that if you scratch an anthropologist, you are likely to find a paper on names clambering for attention.”
Another from Carcanet Press, indicating that copyeditors and proofreaders everywhere should be drinking more coffee:
“Captain Ahab, Odysseus, Huck Finn, characters from The Satanic Verses who cause security problems, characters so minor that they are guttering out, all clamber for attention.”
In fact, a cursory review suggests that this might be a particularly British (and Australian and Kiwi) eggcorn.
I also rather like the visual imagery: rather than clamoring for attention, these entities (whatever they happen to be) bodily scramble over one another in an effort to get to the top of the heap.
Last edited by cherrymary (2007-06-22 02:34:23)
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They’d sure make a great clamor, clambering over one another like that!
It is fun imagery. I like this one.
(Heck, I like all eggcorns. And I’m thrilled to find other people who see the richness in them, instead of just being snide about how stupid people are)
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See also “clamor” used where “clamber” should be used:
A Friendly Stage With More Décolletage Than Politics “Conan O’Brien might have deserved an Emmy, but his skit for the writers’ award went too far in the wrong direction. His writers’ names were read off to a shot of weary, dirty day laborers, some of them Hispanic, clamoring into a pickup driven by Mr. O’Brien. The joke that Mr. O’Brien’s writers were as badly paid and exploited as migrant workers seemed to mainly exploit and belittle migrant workers.”
A Google search turns up more.
Last edited by GrantBarrett (2007-09-17 06:54:18)
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Like puppies in a petshop bin. Wonderful image.
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