Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I’m new to this site as well as to eggcorns. But one of my professors was discussing eggcorns the other day, and I just noticed what I thought was one when I was browsing the web. I figured I would share it here and see if I was correct.
If you google “wunderkid” you’ll notice many postings where people use the term to describe a brilliant child or a talented young athlete. It is my understanding that the correct term is “wunderkind.” This seems like a very easy mistake to make, as “wunderkind” means a child prodigy, thus it would make sense for someone to assume that the correct spelling is wunder(kid).
I’d appreciate feedback. Thanks.
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I think it probably is an eggcorn, brekir. But it belongs to a special class of cross-language eggcorns, and some of these cross-languages eggcorns are not (in my opinion) as exciting as the full-blooded English eggcorn.
In these mixed-language eggcorns, part of a foreign expression gets Anglicized and the other part remains a foreign word. When we say “kindergarden” for “kindergarten,” for example, we substitute the English word “garden” for the cognate German “Garten” in one part of the double-barreled German word. Other part-substitution eggcorns of this type include “in route,” “mano-on-mano,” and “old langsyne.”
These cross-language eggcorns become funnier and more interesting when the substitution does not involve a true translation or a cognate. “Fate accompli,” for example, or “chaise lounge” shows a potentially embarrassing ignorance of the underlying expression.
In the case of “wunderkid,” the substituted words “kid” and “Kind” are probably not cognates (i.e., derived from a common original word). This raises the eggcorn potency. But “kid” is an acceptable translation of the German “Kind,” so the tension of humor dissipates a little. The speaker might have been crossing over to a full translation (the non-eggcorn “wonderkid”) and didn’t quite make it all the way across the bridge.
Last edited by kem (2008-02-29 16:12:49)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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It falls in the same category as this previously-covered topic:
Kiddygarden (Kindergarten) by Craig C Clarke Contribute! 2 2007-02-14 07:53:29 by Craig C Clarke
I’m very cautious about declaring variants of foreign-derived words as eggcorns because the English variant sometimes has a common etymology as the foreign word. (Since wunderkind literally means “wonderchild”, we wouldn’t take the latter as an eggcorn of it). So, I just recommend that we look at the “kid” part very carefully. Seems to be different, but again, it was covered.
Last edited by jorkel (2008-02-29 14:13:23)
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I think Jorkel has a good point here. There’s no new imagery involved in “wunderkid/wonderkid” since it ends up being largely just a straight (if colloquial) translation of the original. I’d call this a calque rather than an eggcorn.
English “kid” and German “kind” don’t seem to be related etymologically, but they mean essentially the same thing—it’s a pretty neat coincidence.
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Perhaps the half-calques that are in the eggcorn database (“mano-on-mano,” “in route,” “old langsyne”) should be removed. I agree with you—they are marginal entries.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I think I’d remove at least a fifth of the Database if it were up to me. “In/on route” and “old lang syne” would be pretty high on my list of extirpations. Some other “cross-language” entries I worry about are “on mass,” “catchitore,” “pepperika,” and the absolutely unbelievable “power mower” for “paramour.”
If the analysis given for “mano on mano”—that it’s being interpreted as “man on man”—is correct, then I’d be willing to defend it on the grounds that it has new imagery that still seems to work in the usual context.
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I’m with Pat. Reshaping “En route” to “in route” hardly captures the spirit of an eggcorn introducing new imagery, but the reshaping “mano” (which means “hand”) to “man” does. The reshaping “wunderkind” to “wunderkid” is somewhere in between given the distinct etymologies; I’d probably give it the nod as an eggcorn.
As for “pepperika,” it just leaves me confused. Paprika is made from peppers, and the word clearly derives from the same. But the person who doesn’t know that might unique enough to warrant a distinctive ”-ika.” The problem is that the stage was already set by the etymology. (At least “kid” and “child” seem to have entered English by different routes).
Last edited by jorkel (2008-02-29 19:25:34)
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