Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
The problem for me here is that as soon as someone uses the word “madcap†– or a variant thereof – my tendency is to attribute to them a heightened level of lexical self-consciousness. “Madcap†is one of those words that seem somehow to exemplify what they denote – I suspect that “madcap” has a whiff of camp for many of us. The kind of people who go around using “madcap†may be precisely the kind of people who are aware of the semantic possibilities latent in a conflation of “madcap†and “camp.†In other words, it’s hard to be sure that any of my citations are “authentic.â€
On the other hand, phonological anticipation may be playing a big role here, too. “Madcap adventure†gets over 26k rghits, while “madcap romp†only gets about 9k rghits. But there are no instances of “madcamp adventure†while the majority of “madcamp†citations are followed by “romp.†The numbers are just too small to lean on very hard, but I wonder whether the structural symmetry of camp/romp isn’t exerting some gravitational pull. If that’s the case, however, is the anticipation an enabling condition that makes the “eggcorn†more frequent? Or is it a disqualifier? Are people merely anticipating that “m†in “romp†without thinking about the meaning of the resulting reshaping? These kinds of questions can also be asked of cases where a reshaping is only likely to occur in a given dialect – and over the years people on the forum have used dialect both to justify and to reject the eggcornicity of certain reanalyses. (And I’m not saying that either perspective is wrong – this may be a situation where only a case-by-case analysis will work – but I think we need to address the issue more overtly than we have thus far.) In this case, I lean towards eggcorn if these aren’t simply puns.
“Madcamp†gets over 1k rghits, but there only seem to be somewhere between 12-15 instances of my target usage.
Join Chissum Worthington on this madcamp romp in promoting his own silly live appearances.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p … 125D69B6D2
Title says it all really – loveable characters, good setting and the usual fun and madcamp romp of a novel.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1DJS488 … 0340819650
It’s a madcamp romp as singers, dancers,comedians, magicians, etc. take the stage for the approval (and dis-approval) of three ‘celebrity’ judges.
http://www.planet99.com/chicago/bars/ka … orner.html
Truly classic madcamp comedy + all the extras they could muster = the definitive DVD for this beloved goof-off
http://www.calgarymovies.com/DVD/reviews/Airplane.asp
Midnight Madness is pretty much madcamp fun around a college campus.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081159/use … r=prolific
The reshaping is almost certainly intentional in this citation:
A madcamp musical romp through B-grade style Hollywood sci-fi horror cinema, erotic, queer and set to a wild rock musical soundtrack of all time classic songs – incl. ‘Sweet Transvestite’, ‘The Timewarp’, ‘Touch-A Touch-A Touch Me’ & ‘Science Fiction Double Feature’ – The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a brilliant rendering of a smash hit stage show and a wildly entertaining high camp classic in its own right.”
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ROCKY-HORROR-PIC … 2151r30432
Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-08-26 02:32:07)
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Wow. Good evidence for a lot being anticipation of the -mp of romp, which of course can lead to madcamp itself becoming standardized and starting to expand its usage to other contexts, with campy purposeful usage also highly possible.
Definite potential there, unyet not enough evidence to call it an eggcorn.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I agree, it definitely seems like romp is exerting an influence, and speakers are anticipating the mp.
But of course, Pat’s examples are written, so it’s not quite articulatory anticipation. And in the case of “madcamp comedy” and “madcamp fun” it can’t even be fingers anticipating typing M-P. It seems like the spoken madcamp romp has become common enough to jump to other contexts.
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I just looked through the fifty ughits for “madcamp” and I couldn’t see anything that looked like a real eggcorn. Too bad. It’s one of those substitutions that would make a classic eggcorn.
Phonological anticipation could play a role in “madcamp romp,” but my first impression is that the web occurrences of the phrase are either puns or echos of puns. Sometimes puns can grow up to be eggcorns, though-somebody should put a note on their calendar to check this word after a few more years.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Kem wrote
I just looked through the fifty ughits for “madcamp†and I couldn’t see anything that looked like a real eggcorn.
Kem—You may be right. But what would look like a real eggcorn to you? Defining those criteria is precisely what makes this one interesting/frustrating for me, so I’d be interested in knowing what criteria you were employing. This seemed to me a weird case because sometimes we diss our own finds a bit when we can only find examples in poorly spelled forum posts—the idea being that people who don’t care about standard spellings at all are just going to be producing misspellings that look like eggcorns from time to time. But the problem here was nearly the opposite: “madcamp romp” appeared in such well-groomed circumstances that you had to wonder. But beyond that, I couldn’t define for myself convincing criteria for discerning puns from potential eggcorns.
Nilep wrote
And in the case of “madcamp comedy†and “madcamp fun†it can’t even be fingers anticipating typing M-P. It seems like the spoken madcamp romp has become common enough to jump to other contexts.
It’s possible “madcamp romp” provides a generalizable template for some speakers. But I see another explanation. “M-insertion” is really common: “trompical,” “constimpated,” etc.—this kind of stuff gets dozens of hits, and if you’re googling reshapings every day you see them all the time. And I think it becomes even more likely when the insertion produces an element that’s identical to a well-formed word—like ”-cap” going to ”-camp.” So people would probably be coming up with “madcamp” even without environments that provide structural parallels. And when such a parallel is present, the tendency is heightened further.
I think anticipation on the web is something that needs more looking at. Some months ago Arnold Zwicky said on Language Log that he thought “getter better” for “getting better” was becoming an idiom. The google hits are incredibly huge, and “getter” does appear in places where it’s not followed by words ending in ”-er.” So it’s admittedly really bizarre and hard to explain. But I felt he needed to explore the anticipation angle more. Things like “stilling standing” and a “littled tired” are easy to find.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2008-08-26 13:49:02)
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What disqualified most of the examples of “madcamp romp” for me was the possibility of punning. Many refer to “campy” movies. It almost looks as though the pun “madcamp romp” is taking on a life of its own. And then, of course, there are the phonological issues you mention. All these problems are magnified by puns and glosses being spread over so few web examples. COCA, I note, doesn’t contain the word “madcamp.”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Hmmm… thought I might’ve located some “mad cat antics”, but actually got zero Google hits. I’m a bit surprised considering that it has accessible imagery for anyone not knowing what “madcap” means.
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