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
“The British tabloid press are having a filled day with this McCann story.” http://www.zimbio.com/Madeleine+McCann
Curiously, when I entered “filled day” in Google, I was asked “Do you mean ‘field day’”? Given that my search produced hundreds of “fun-filled days,” and things of that sort, it’s hard to know how common this is. But it’s certainly an eggcorn, as the days of many a tabloid journalist are filled with the pursuit of this story.
Offline
This sounds like an eggcorn in that the writer must have substituted a familiar term for an unfamiliar one. If this person was not familiar with field days (do schools still hold these?), then filled days must have sounded right (maybe like “fun-filled day”?) It also could result from the person’s normal pronunciation. I’m not sure where this Web site example originated, but some dialects could make the word “field” sound like “filled.” My old roommate used to pronounce “meal” as “mill.” (Though I doubt he would have spelled it that way.)
Feeling quite combobulated.
Offline
What is a field day? The origins of the idiom are apparently military, and referred to any day spent in the field on maneuvers1. Later it referred to either a “parade day,” which was a break from the usual routine, or a “cleaning day”[2], perhaps ironically. Also used for school outings. A feel day is a simpler image, and a natural result of the loss of the unpronounced d. It might be a chance to feel good, to break out of the unfeeling routine.
Restaurant review:
Gordan Ramsey would have had a feel day in this place, of that I am quite sure.
(http://www.stockholm-eating.com/15664.htm)
Vacation blog:
Sleeping on sand isn’t the most comfortable and the mosquitoes had a feel day with my ankles.
(http://youngmilkymilko.wordpress.com/20 … edom-ring/)
Pet love forum:
We later stopped to take a small hike up to a veiwing piont…. and that was the funnest part of the day…. there was allot of people and other dogs there too…. Of course, EVERYONE thought I was soooo cute!!! Well after an out door feeled day, I was back home to my beds, pillows and blankets to my spoiled-ness!!
(http://www.dogster.com/dogs/503221/diary/Happys_life)
Bike journal
The health folks shut off the water to the whole campus (but nobody else in town, certainly not the U. people – we’re the community college. Jay Leno would find a way to have a feeled day but the incompetence wasn’t here, really) and said the earliest we’d have it back was Friday, 10 p.m.
(http://bikejournal.com/thread.asp?Threa … mPost=2531)
1. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/136150.html
2. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/field_day
The Database search says this one is here somewhere, but I couldn’t find it on the page it sent me to.
Last edited by burred (2009-04-27 22:20:01)
Offline
Yeah, a feel day feels good.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offline