Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Just now I found this eggcorn: “enigsinds”, which should have been spelled “enigszins”.
The word means 1. “a little, somewhat” or 2. “in any way” and is composed of “enig” (in the meaning of “a certain quantity”) and “zin” (which has many meanings, but here will mean something like “use”) and the whole is put in the genitive, so literally translates to “of a certain use”. However, the form is quite archaic and the new way of writing replaces “zins” (the genitive of “zin”) with “sinds”, which means “since”, but is much more frequent and sounds nearly identical. The odd thing is that “sinds” (being a conjunct) cannot be used in compounds, whereas “zin” can.
Hoping to see more Dutch eggcorns…
Offline
Some counts from Google (the only reliable error corpus I know of): – enigszins (correct spelling): 3.8M hits – enigzins (missing – s -, pronounciation identical): 600k hits – enigsinds (the alleged eggcorn): 51k hits – enigssinds (binding – s – copied from original): 294 hits
Last edited by TGV (2007-10-18 13:31:19)
Offline
Your post reminded me—I was going to ask about appropriate names for eggcorns in other languages. Translating egg-corn into another tongue would not, in most cases, produce a self-referential name.
Chances are this has been discussed in this forum before. Perhaps someone can point me to the thread. I am particularly interested in a good French term—some quintessential French faute de langue that could serve as the paradigm and tag for similar mistakes.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Offline
kem, we’ve had a few posts of eggcorns in foreign languages, but no real discussion of what might replace the word “eggcorn” in each. I suppose someone might simply select some (different) representative from each language—given that there isn’t anything extraordinarily profound about the word “eggcorn” to begin with. One linguist even remarked that the (English) name for these things might have been “pus jewels” if it had been discovered sooner. (Personally, I think that would have made a much more irreverent, sassier name!)
I would also point out that there was a poster by the name “huevo maiztro” whose name played upon “egg” and “corn” in Spanish. That was somewhat clever, but not quite what you’re looking for as an answer.
Offline
For a French word for “eggcorn,” Chris Waigl—the founder and owner of this site—proposed the term “poteaux roses.” She mentions it in a posting here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … ?id=3#fn1. And there she also gives a link to a brief discussion of “poteaux roses” by Mark Liberman over at Language Log: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language … 02350.html
In the same thread, our own Gilibug proposed a term for Hebrew eggcorns, along with a link to her own collection of them.
Chris Waigl also discusses there a Danish group (Fiduso) who came up with a Danish term for the analogous phenomenon—“skrællemand” (“peel-man”—which is an eggcorn in Danish for “skraldemand”—”garbage collector.”) They divide such words into four categories, and in their discussion of the first type, they provide an explanation of the Danish term; I’ve given a quick and dirty translation below (feel free to yell if I’ve screwed up the translation):
I den første gruppe kræves det at det nye ord skal give god mening for en ukyndig, altsÃ¥ en mening der passer med det oprindelige begreb. “Skrællemand” er et sÃ¥dant eksempel fordi en mand der tager sig af skræller er cirka det samme som en der tager sig af skrald. Den slags ord kalder vi “ægte skrællemænd”.
http://fiduso.dk/?page=skraellemaend
[In the first group it is necessary that the new word will provide a reasonable meaning for [a person who doesn’t know the original term]— in other words, a meaning that fits in with the original conception. “Skrællemand” is an example of such a word because a person who takes care of peels (“skræller”) is more or less the same as a person who takes care of garbage (“skrald”). We call this type of word “true skrællemænd.”]
Last edited by patschwieterman (2007-10-19 12:55:47)
Offline