Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Surprised a search didn’t turn this up.
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There are some sightings with a two-word spelling, but one can’t be too sure what these are:
DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE !!!!!
Orange is the sound of a field filled with dandy-lions blowing in the wind. Orange is the taste of a pizza that just came out of the oven. ...
www.englishforums.com/English/DonTLeaveMeAlone/c… – 116k – Similar pages
http://www.englishforums.com/English/Do … q/post.htm
Nezalezhnosti. Kyiv. Ukraine.: They said there were steppes …
those fields looked like our dandy lion fields.in the spring all is yellow with dandy lions.here in the USA we have flat lands in some midwest states.they …
nezalezhnosti.blogspot.com/2007/05/they-said-the… – 65k – Similar pages
http://nezalezhnosti.blogspot.com/2007/ … -here.html
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As jorkel says, it’s often hard to know what the user intends with this spelling. Most of the (c. 160,000) raw Google seem to be making an intentional joke or poetic turn, as with Joe’s first example. Others – like the second example above – are unclear; they might be re-shaping, but maybe self-consciously so.
On the other hand, dandelions are dandy, particularly when they appear as an early harbinger of spring. And the original etymology, dent de lion “lion’s tooth” never would have occurred to me if I didn’t look it up.
This page includes “pictures of dandylions.” There is no indication that this is a self-conscious or jocular reshaping; it could be an eggcorn, or it might be a misspelling.
http://www.webshots.com/search?media=ph … earch_menu
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As a play on words this one goes back at least 1939, and probably well before that. Who could forget the Cowardly Lion saying “I’m just a dandy lion” in The Wizard of Oz. Hard to know what is intentional among users and how much is just phonetic spelling (combining two familiar words because that is what dandelion sounds like).
Feeling quite combobulated.
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I can vouch for thinking and probably writing “dandylion” years ago before I saw the word “dandelion” in print. Yet I wasn’t thinking “dandy,” I was just guessing at the phonetic spelling and probably borrowing the letters from “candy.”
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