Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
The Eggcorn Forum and the Eggcorn Database are currently in the process of being converted into static sites.
Once the conversion is complete, all existing posts are expected to still be accessible at their original URLs. However, no new posts will be possible.
Feel free to comment on the relevant forum threads.
Chris -- 2025-05-10
I spotted “falls on the heels of” for “follows on the heels of” at: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/06 … of-no.html
It turns out that it’s pretty common—“falls on the heels” gets 705 hits on Google (compared to 138,000 for “follows on the heels”).
This is clearly a mishearing of “follows” as “falls” and a reinterpretation of the idiom that makes sense in its way—if you “fall on” the heels of someone, you must be following close behind.
Offline