Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
My car has a few rattle-tat-tats.
The instrumentation combines the swooning strings, the angry, throttling guitars , and the Farisfa organs going into hard synths, the rattle-tat-tat drums,
Now my 2000 LS with 26300 miles is making a “CLUNK†Rattle-Tat-Tat at low speeds going over any road imperfection
“Well, Boss,†Danny started his staccato rattle-tat-tat analysis. “I count 24 pictures in total.
“Rattle-tat-tat, smack, boom — take that. Your deadâ€, he would guttural out. Billy now jumped on top of the bed pointing his imaginary machine gun
The standard form is, of course, “rat-a-tat-tatâ€â€”it’s standardness reflected in 140K reported ghits vs. a couple of dozen for the rattle variant. One could argue that they have to be etymologically related, I suppose, though I wouldn’t easily have thought of them as employing the same morpheme, and I am more aware than most that words like ratt-le are bimorphemic. To me the imagery does shift, away from a clear four-notes-in-three-beats (two eighths followed by two quarter notes) to an unspecified number of fast notes followed by two slow ones.
Btw, isn’t the verb “to guttural (out)†a nice one? = Speak out in a mutteral voice?
*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 wonder whether there might be something eggcornish in ‘gutteral’, for the throaty gurgling of rain-filled gutters isn’t too far from the gargling throatiness of guttural speech.
Remembering the AmEnglish ‘tidbit’ or almost equally popular ‘tidbid’, I looked for ‘raddle tad tad’ but without success. “Rad a tad tad’ was there though, as was ‘tid for tad’ and ‘tell tale tid.’ I used to believe the usage was the result of puritanical horror at the word ‘tit’ but now I’m not so sure. ‘No shid’ for example yields 81 ughits.
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DavidTuggy wrote:
One could argue that they have to be etymologically related, I suppose…
My dictionary (New Oxford American Dictionary) says that etymologically both “rattle” and “rat-a-tat” (or “rat-a-tat-tat”) are imitative words and, since they’re imitating similar sounds, it perhaps could be argued that this etymological similarity militates against eggcornicity.
To me the imagery does shift, away from a clear four-notes-in-three-beats (two eighths followed by two quarter notes) to an unspecified number of fast notes followed by two slow ones.
I don’t get this at all, David. Assuming we use the more standard “rat-a-tat-tat” rather than the shorter “rat-a-tat”, I see no difference between that and “rattle-tat-tat” in terms of number of syllables, accents, or rhythm. Both are two eighths followed by two quarter notes, aren’t they?
Dixon, rattling on…
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Dixon Wragg wrote:
I don’t get this at all, David. Assuming we use the more standard “rat-a-tat-tat” rather than the shorter “rat-a-tat”, I see no difference between that and “rattle-tat-tat” in terms of number of syllables, accents, or rhythm. Both are two eighths followed by two quarter notes, aren’t they?
I’m not talking (directly) about the phonological shape of these, but the meaning. For me “rat-a-tat-tat†is quite strictly iconic: it sounds like and also means two eighths followed by two quarter notes. “rattle-tat-tat†also sounds like that, but to me it means a flurry of notes followed by two quarter notes. Two eighth notes don’t easily count as a rattle, for me.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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DavidTuggy wrote:
I’m not talking (directly) about the phonological shape of these, but the meaning. For me “rat-a-tat-tat†is quite strictly iconic: it sounds like and also means two eighths followed by two quarter notes. “rattle-tat-tat†also sounds like that, but to me it means a flurry of notes followed by two quarter notes. Two eighth notes don’t easily count as a rattle, for me.
Ohhhh, I get it. And it makes sense.
Dixon
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