Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
At dinner, Mom said her glass looked like a “brandy sniffer.” The term should be sniffer, and I’m sniffing an eggcorn here. Thoughts?
B
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or an alternate spelling? Bcs a snifter is a glass designed to aid and abet the smelling of one’s drink (and the word comes from the work “sniff”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snifter
“The large surface area helps evaporate the brandy into aroma, while the narrow opening helps to trap the aroma of the drink in the glass. ”
So since the imagery is not that different, I’m not sure it’s a eggcorn in the traditional sense of that term.
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I think that because the imagery is similar it IS an eggcorn! The malformed word fits the imagery… but it’s still mal-.
BS
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no, no—an eggcorn requires a DIFFERENT imagery, an ALTERNATE meaning that still makes sense.
And “snifter” is “a thing that helps you sniff”—which is really only an alternate spelling of “sniffer,” “a thing that helps you sniff.”
It’s a misspelling, or an alternate spelling, not a true eggcorn.
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I concede. I was being a little hard-headed and blocking any imagery associated with ‘snifter.’ They’re the same image exactly.
Sniffer’s still not the right word, but I’m not telling Mom again.
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