Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Sorry this is off-topic, not a reshaping I don’t think… but I figured someone here might have a clue about this.
I was just reading a person’s comment elsewhere and they used the word “tamram” and I am trying to find out anything about it.
The context is this:
“i have had serious mood swings and tamrams all my life.”
The person is from Arkansas, if this might be a regional thing.
I can’t find it in dictionary.com, and google turns up a lot but most seem to be people’s names, or nicknames, screen names, etc.
Anybody familiar with this? It actually SOUNDS like something of the sort that this person is using the word for… a temper or mood thing.
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I would guess they meant “tantrum.” I’ve never heard anyone say “tamram.”
Feeling quite combobulated.
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Just googled “tamrams” and came up with this:
“Angel always won and today was no diffrent the crying and tempter tamrams was just not worth it…”
http://www.blognow.com.au/blackbird/538 … angel.html
The rest of that page is interesting in the same way.
Tempter tamrams. I wonder if in some places people pronounce tantrum more like tamram?
And now I find this:
“Is Ronaldo bugging any other united fans with his little tamrams.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A33002254
Could there maybe be slight eggcorn possibilities after all? Does the ram part of tamram suggest any imagery?
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hands and feet pounding on the floor?
hands make “tams” and feet make “rams”?
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Wow. This is an elusive one; I just googled ‘tamram’ and only see it used as a user name for forums and e-mails. I also checked the Urban Dictionary for slang usage; it doesn’t appear. I think we need more examples of its use in place of ‘tantrum’.
As for imagery, ‘ram’ works for me because I can conjure up an irate ram chasing down a person or bucking with another ram, but I find it a stretch. Could it just be vernacular? I think if it’s use is restricted to a small region, well then, to me at least I don’t see it as an eggcorn.
When I saw the word, I immediately thought ‘tangram’; not ‘tantrum’. Though I think I see that first because I’m a teacher and tangrams are widely used as teaching tools.
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Well so far there’s one from a person in Arkansas, one from the UK, and apparently one from Australia, so I don’t think it’s a regional thing.
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Craig,
Merely an opinion. In suggesting that it was a regional usage, I only looked to your original post. This is one of the reasons I’d like to see a list of criteria posted for identifying possible eggcorns. In some posts, it seems important to have numerous ghits, while in others this doesn’t matter so much. I googled ‘tamram’ and mostly saw references to names, but it’s possible that it is more a spoken slip than a written one.
I just find it difficult to learn and identify eggcorns when we’re not uniform in the criteria needed to peg them as such. :) Still, it’s fun to discuss and disagree once in a while.
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Brooksie99,
Whoever is in charge around here doesn’t ever come around to tell us what those criteria are, so we largely make it all up as we go along. If you want to know the opinion of linguists and those whose opinions really matter on this subject, you might check a more academic circle—which might include the Language Log.
As for my personal opinion about what makes a good eggcorn… it comes down to imagery, prevalence and credibility. (By credibility I mean knowing for sure that the reshaping was indeed naive/accidental—rather than intentional, e.g., a pun, or planted in someone else’s head). To me prevalence is also important because it measures how widespread a misconception might be. Finally, do I have sharp criteria regarding imagery? No, but grammatical consistency and the absence of nonsensical fragments are the ingredients of my favorites.
-Joe
Last edited by jorkel (2008-06-27 12:42:40)
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It occurs to me that “tamram” would make a great name for a drum.
Feeling quite combobulated.
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rules schmules. I’m just here to have fun.
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