Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Just had a rousing morning argument with my husband about this one.
He was referring to an activity that would “stroke one’s creativity.” And I said that he really meant to “stoke one’s creativity.”
He insists that he wants to “pet” the creativity of the person to make it feel loved and encouraged and I told him he was nuts.
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Interesting one, 2Loquacious. We talk about stroking someone’s ego, but I think we also stoke [the embers of] creativity to fan them into flame. Your husband’s imagery makes it a potential eggcorn, but it seems more like an idiom blend to me.
Feeling quite combobulated.
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JonW719 wrote:
Interesting one, 2Loquacious. We talk about stroking someone’s ego, but I think we also stoke [the embers of] creativity to fan them into flame. Your husband’s imagery makes it a potential eggcorn, but it seems more like an idiom blend to me.
Hmm. For me it is clearly an eggcorn, and the report from the eggcorner of what he meant cinches the deal. (Yes, I did that on purpose.) Again, I don’t see how the likelihood of it being an idiom blend diminishes or otherwise affects the likelihood of it being an eggcorn. Idiom blending has to do with how one of these beautiful structures might arise; eggcornicity has to do with the result. An idiom blend is an eggcorn if the result of the blending (a) involves a reanalysis, substituting plausible new imagery for the imagery of the original (the acorn), (b) sounds/looks enough like the acorn that the difference is not highly noticeable (in either the spoken or the written mode) and© is standard for at least some speaker(s).
Item (b), and at least the plausibility, the “making sense†aspect, of (a), both make for the kind of situation that is propitious for inadvertent blendings, whether of words, phrases, or what have you. An insecure grasp of the acorn, which is almost necessary to produce©, is also propitious for blending and for malapropisms—which also like (b). Malapropism and blending (which are very far from being mutually exclusive categories) both can produce eggcorns, given the proper circumstances.
btw and fwiw, I think I stoke flames rather than embers. I get the idea of shovelling or pouring on lots of fuel rather than carefully adding fuel, strategically placed, to a fire in danger of going out. I can fan either embers or flames.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-10-06 09:28:06)
*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 Tuggy wrote:
An idiom blend is an eggcorn if the result of the blending (a) involves a reanalysis, substituting plausible new imagery for the imagery of the original (the acorn), (b) sounds/looks enough like the acorn that the difference is not highly noticeable (in either the spoken or the written mode) and© is standard for at least some speaker(s).
The problem for me is that this seems to work best in precisely those situations where one doesn’t need to invoke a blend to explain a reshaping. Could this be a blend? Yes, I think so. Could it have arisen if “stroke your ego” didn’t exist in the language but everything else did? Yes, absolutely. And nothing here proves to me that the speaker was thinking of “stroke one’s ego” on any level.
And David, this sentence has me baffled:
Idiom blending has to do with how one of these beautiful structures might arise; eggcornicity has to do with the result.
Uh, uh….
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(I’ll answer this over on the discussion —Eggcornology— part of the site.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-10-08 08:34:13)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Nobody seems to have mentioned it yet, so I’ll just point out that stoke << >> stroke is a round-tripper.
Of course Sisi stoked his ego on Charlie Rose saying that Trump would make a good leader…
tweet
The teacher had stoked his ego by naming him the math whiz of the class…
article
He was careful to pick an easy target, though. And he won. Stoked his ego.
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...he greased him with tanning bed oil and stoked his ego by calling him a winner…
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Over the next hour I took control of his fantasies, whispered naughty words in his ear, stoked his ego, teased him, made him feel powerful and desired and strong and masculine.
manipulation instructions
Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2018-02-06 15:17:55)
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