Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Never saw this before this morning. It actually took me a minute to interpret what it meant to “throw a Spaniard in the works.”
From a “politics and environment” blog comment: “Just to throw a spaniard in the works, NOAA analysis of data from Argo remote ocean sensors detect a cooling of ocean temps.” (http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/ar … 01866.html)
Comment on a car race: “Not only is there a 90% chance of rain on the Sunday, the temperatures plummet below anything experienced on the practice and qualifying days. That could throw a Spaniard in the works…” (http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ni … =firefox-a)
From a political thread at LibraryThing: “The mass media is talking up Hilary as throwing a spaniard in Obama’s works, thus getting McCain elected for a third term…” (http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=33897)
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Funny!
It may be an eggcorn. I can think of one or two ways to explain the imagery substitution. None of them would be politically correct.
Last edited by kem (2008-05-08 22:16:36)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I was about to post cocker SPANIARD (as an eggcorn of cocker spaniel), but spaniel actually has the same etymology as Spaniard.
At any rate, here are the findings…
Ask Cocker Spaniel Questions
I own a 2 yr old cocker spaniard (male). The last day he … I own a 2 yr old cocker spaniard (male). The last day he has been very lathargic, walking funny …
finance.justanswer.com/JA/ASP_ASK/FID_8/K_726/P_… – 52k – Similar pages
http://finance.justanswer.com/JA/ASP_AS … paniel.htm
GameSpot Forums – The Latino Board – My little cat is missin…
May 2, 2006 … I was driving on the fast lane of the freeway, when all of the sudden this dog (cocker spaniard i think) appears, I swerve a little and miss …
www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topi… – 130k – Similar pages
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/sh … d=24573747
Planet Ark – It’s a Dog’s Life at New Crop of Pet Hotels
... Jersey said she prefers using boarding services to a dog walker when she’s away and can’t take care of Molly, her 1-year-old English Cocker Spaniard. ...
www.planetark.com/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?new… – 7k – Similar pages
Dreams | Puppy Fetus
My husband had brought home a gift from a parent, a thorough bred six week old Cocker Spaniard puppy. The servant would not take care of it, as she helped …
www.tulane.edu/~lesser2/dream_pages/puppy_fetus…. – 4k – Similar pages
http://www.tulane.edu/~lesser2/dream_pa … fetus.html
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I would be curious how many of the examples given are from British sites. “Spanner” isn’t that common among U.S. English speakers, is it? Usually it’s “wrench.” (And I’ve heard people say “throw a monkey in the wrench.”) But it’s a fun slip, regardless of the origin.
Feeling quite combobulated.
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I’ve always assumed that instances of this were puns by people who knew it as the name of John Lennon’s second book.
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Sometimes that does seem to be the case—hard to detect irony on the Internets, of course, but I’ve asked around a bit and knowledge of the Lennon title is not very widespread. I’ve spoken to young adult Americans, but it’s possible that it started as the Lennon pun though they don’t realize that now. Also, several people I asked didn’t know what a spanner was, and one had never heard the expression at all.
This one is a non-native speaker, but the native speakers didn’t get the joke either: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=587766
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jorkel wrote:
Dreams | Puppy Fetus
My husband had brought home a gift from a parent, a thorough bred six week old Cocker Spaniard puppy. The servant would not take care of it, as she helped …
www.tulane.edu/~lesser2/dream_pages/puppy_fetus…. – 4k – Similar pages
http://www.tulane.edu/~lesser2/dream_pa … fetus.html
It’s interesting that both Cocker Spaniard and thorough bred recapitulate the etymology of the original. Of course, thorough bred differs from the standard thoroughbred only in introducing a white space, so we might not want to call it a new form at all.
Is there a term for a non-standard form that recapitulates etymology?
(I note, by the way, that the author jorkel quotes does not use hyphens in six-week-old either. From the examples in the Oxford English Dictionary, it looks as though the hyphenated form thorough-bred was preferred to thoroughbred until the late nineteenth century (c. 1882). Again, this suggests that we can’t really call thorough bred a new form, at least not in the way Cocker Spaniard is.)
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Is there a term for a non-standard form that recapitulates etymology?
An eggkernal?
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Eggkernal you say? ...And all this time I thought the term was eggcolonel.
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John Lennon’s second book was entitled ‘A Spaniard in the Works.’ I always thought it was random surrealism and never noticed the play on words until now.
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