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
I thought I heard this on Irish TV last night, and sure enough, there are examples on the web –
http://www.adena.com/adena/usa/rv/rv014.htm – “The judges were clear-headed men, not to be brownbeaten.”
http://www.metstoday.com/hot-stove/2007 … white-sox/ – “BTW I was also one of the few people elated to get Ollie last year, and was continually brownbeaten when I sang his praises on MetsBlog…”
http://www.tv.com/studio-60-on-the-suns … /msgs.html – “Harriet is routinely brownbeaten for her beliefs, a “dramatic” gambit that is as tiresome as it is insulting.”
http://experimentsinliving.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/ – “We live in an age where we are brownbeaten into consumerism from every direction. Resist! Resist!!”
(I looked for “brownbeaten” because it seems more googlable than other inflected / hyphenated variants.)
The OED defines “browbeat” as “To bear down, discourage, or oppose, with stern, arrogant, or insolent looks or words; to snub, to bully; ‘to depress with severe brows, and stern or lofty looks’”, and remarks, “it appears… that the brow in question was that of the beater, not of the beaten party; but it is not evident whether the meaning was ‘to beat with one’s (frowning) brows’, or ‘to beat (? lower) one’s brows at’.” To the extent that I ever thought about it, I assumed that the brow was indeed that of the “beaten party”, but admittedly that’s an implausible image. Compared to all this obscurity, “brownbeat” is a lot more vivid.
Offline
Welcome to the Eggcorn website Breffni.
Could you elaborate a little on the new imagery which surrounds “brownbeat”? We should try to nail that down.
By the way, I had a remotely related eggcorn in the forum: “eye brown” for “eye brow.” In this case, the “brown” was a reference to the hair color of the eye brow.
Offline
Well, I was thinking that it might be construed as either a relative of “beating black and blue”, or maybe even “beating the crap / shit out of X”. Both of which are rather more imageable images than the original “browbeating” suggested by the OED etymology.
Offline