Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
On a mailing list, a writer once wrote that she felt like she was “in a battle of whits with the unarmed”. She was so embarrassed at this error that she quit the mailing list the next day.
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I have since been told that the phrase “battle of whits” was created intentionally for a satirical dramatic work of the late 19th century. Yet people have been copying it ever since, sometimes intending it as a continuation of the joke, but often not. It can be hard to tell an eggcorn from a pun just by looking at the word.
Walt Kelly took lots of words apart and put them back together in the Pogo comic strip. One that comes to mind (since I’m looking at the Eggcorn Forum) is EGG-ZACKLY (in all uppercase letters, in the comic strip tradition). Another, that became part of the title of a book, was G.O. FIZZICKLE. “Fizzickle” and “egg-zackly” remain in use to this day but would, it seems to me, be considered as puns even when people use them by mistake.
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