Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Imagine a stew of sweet-smelling petals and spices—a veritable “puree,” no? The usage seems to be a case of spelling-(French)-by-ear. I stumbled on an academic abstract containing the error; a quick “Google” assembled a genuine variety of independent contexts, including an antique dealer and an Air Force newsletter. Here’s a pot puree, err, potpourri, of my findings.
1. A description of wedding ceremony decorations, in this case seed-pod shaped satin pockets shaped that are “to be filled with almonds or pot puree finished off with ribbon or flowers to suit.” The photograph of the product is clearly of a sachet-like decoration.
http://www.angelcakesellon.co.uk/detail … c51de40e1b
2. An academic abstract coauthored by Fred M. Marcus and Vernon L. Andrews describes “an integration of a body of work,” noting that “previous work in the field includes a pot puree of empirical and meta-theoretical articles spanning three decades and crossing several disciplines.” The page can be found at: (scroll down to the next-to-last entry):
http://www.amst.canterbury.ac.nz/resear … tracts.htm
3. An antique dealer’s product description: “Royal Worcester c. 1880-1884, 210 mm high; pot puree on three elephant feet and sleeping elephant on the lid.” The photograph clearly shows a lidded potpourri vessel.
http://www.theantiquesite.com/product.a … =Pot+Puree
4. Even a civilian-based Air Force newsletter includes a news category for news editors can’t categorize:
http://www.airforceservicessociety.org/PotPureeNews.htm
Hope this makes it into the main database!
Cheerio
Marilyn
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Marilyn,
I’m just learning eggcorns, so I don’t know how useful this is…but I do know some French. Here goes. I think we need to look at the French roots of the mixed words:
pourri – an adjective that literally means spoiled or rotten; together with ‘pot’ it becomes an idiom meaning “medley”
pur̩e Рmeans mashed or pulverized and often has a singular food connotation; usually it refers to one thing like mashed potatoes or tomato sauce, definitely not a stew.
Etymologically, I don’t see a strong connection as “pot purée” sounds like some singular food item bubbling on the stove and pot-pourri as a pleasing blend of several items: dried flowers; a good mix of people, etc. I’m thinking this is more a phonetic substitution simply because I don’t sense the imagery needed for an eggcorn. I could be wrong and not see the imagery because I know in French these are very far apart. However, there are over 2000 ghits. Any other input?
I have a linguist acquaintance who knows French quite well; I’ll run this by him.
Cheers,
Laura
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But what the case is in French is pretty irrelevant for most of us English speakers. Yes, we have a vague idea that pot-pourri and purée are both from French, but as far as we are concerned, pourri means nothing. Pot we are likely to take as cognate if not identical to English pot, and if we think it probably was purée insted of pourri, we are committing a malapropism, which (I would judge) in this case constitutes a reasonably good eggcorn.
Eggcorns and other malapropisms on borrowed foreign-language phrases are a special type: we had the wonderful ifso facto not long ago. For Latin, I can add ad homonym arguments , ad lip_ping your way along, _cognito, ergo sum (which actually may be seen as expressing a deep theological truth), et all , ex officio meaning ‘off the record, unofficially’, nilhil obstat , post departum blues, (the much worse) post mortem depression , post priori knowledge , that’s a sine qua non meaning ‘that goes without saying’. For French I have fewer, but certainly Wa-la! and Walaaa! for Voilà , coup de force , and (two favorites of mine) a blasé-faire attitude and committing a foo pah . Some of these are eggcorns, others are not, but they have in common mangling something foreign, usually with more familiar English elements.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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David,
You’re right. The French side of my brain sometimes wins the battle; if we’re talking an English eggcorn it is fairly irrelevant. I was thinking of etymology but we have the OED for that.
That being said…I agree that “pot” is pretty clear, but how do we make an imagery connection between pourri and purée? I still usually think of purée, even in English, as being a pulverized vegetable, not a mixture of different things. However, I guess a ‘pot purée’ could be seen as a hodge podge if we consider “pour”ing into the pot, or I prefer our American tradition of a ‘melting pot’ as purée. Just to learn…if we have a foreign language malapropism as eggcorn, the imagery is not as relevant?
BTW, love the blasé-faire – I hadn’t heard that one.
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Well, since I don’t speak French (I guess I shame my grandfather, Maurice Lyon Xavier) to me purée just seems like putting things through a blender. A blend.
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Great observation!
I was only thinking of the final product, not the process that might be used to achieve it. I’m sometimes way too literal for this eggcornology stuff.
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Brooksie 99 wrote:
If we have a foreign language malapropism as eggcorn, the imagery is not as relevant?
I wouldn’t say that. But the imagery in any case need not be totally logical or rationalizable. We typically, I am sure, commit malapropisms because we know a word that sort of sounds right, and can make some sort of meaning connection (imagistic or not), not because we think of a meaning that fits and then realize there’s a word with the right sound to fit.
But if the malapropism doesn’t introduce something new into the meaning (as e.g. happens when something nonsensical is substituted), I wouldn’t call it an eggcorn.
(I’m not an expert in eggcorns, though—ask the others!)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-06-27 14:29:51)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Good points, all. Do you think “puree” introduces a new image and idea? That is, mashed as opposed to rotted? Just a thought.
Marilyn
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Another sighting of pot puree in the wild on TV a couple of weeks ago – it was someone being interviewed on, i think, bbc news, where interestingly the pronunciation of “pot” was distinctly correct (po’), but the puree was distinctly not so…
I suspect that the originators and users of the malapropism/eggcorn* probably don’t go for the mashed vs rotten dilemma; tomato puree is concentrated tomato, so po puree must be concentrated… er… something else… ::)
I’d argue that this false etymology and rationalisation would make it an eggcorn, if I understand the definition aright.
*(it’s been sat here on the forum a couple of years without making it as far as the dictionary, so I guess it’s not currently seen as an eggcorn)
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I love blasé-faire (and it can even come close in meaning to its acorn, while adding a motivation for the attitude – well, actually, a lack of motivation). Since Wa-la and Walaaaaa are fairly close the the correct pronunciation, I’ll mention a former Food TV hostess who would say Wel-la for Voilà .
Bruce
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
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