Eggcorn Forum

I guess being run off the mill is sort of like being run off the press? It’s certainly a malapropism, but I’d like to get the “reasonable but non-standard” imagery of an eggcorn clearer in my mind.

kem wrote:

Same here. I don’t see the alternate imagery. A “run off the mill” could be just another way of saying “run of the mill,” couldn’t it?

Does the imagery really have to be alternate? I thought it would be an eggcorn even if the imagery was pretty much the same, as long as the word(s) used to describe the imagery was different (although sounding much like the correct word, of course).

I thought that I was pretty clear on the definition of an eggcorn, but I may have missed an aspect. In truth, the concept seems a bit fuzzy around the edges for everybody—even more than most concepts.

Dixon

Does the imagery really have to be alternate? I thought it would be an eggcorn even if the imagery was pretty much the same, as long as the word(s) used to describe the imagery was different (although sounding much like the correct word, of course).

A subtle question, Dixon. No two words, as you know, are perfect synonyms. Any alternate phrasing that employs a similar-sounding, sense-producing word must therefore produce some degree of new imagery, however slight. It is the degree of this switch in imagery that makes or breaks an eggcorn. If the new imagery turns the sense of the phrase in a new direction, the switch is not an eggcorn. Take, for example, the spoonerism “the Lord is a shoving leopard.” “Shoving leopard” and “loving shepherd” are too distant in their semantics to be called an eggcorn. But when the imageries of the phrase with the word and the phrase with its substitution are alternate paths to the same overall sentiment, as in the recently discussed “skim milk” and “skimp milk,” then we are in eggcorn territory.

I think most of us on the forum agree in principle with what I just wrote, though each of us, coming as we do from various language interests, has our own way of saying it. Many of us, though, want to carry the definition a little further and address a problem at the other end of the imagery shift. Some of the alternate imageries provided by the substitution of a term don’t get far enough away from the original imagery to make the substitution semantically interesting. Because they are not interesting, the notion of an eggcorn seems to be devalued if we admit these weak examples into the category. Take, for example, the substitutions of “hunger pain” for “hunger pang,” “once and a while” for “once in a while,” and “in route” for “en route.” Arguably, some shift in imagery occurs in these examples. But the new imagery doesn’t light any fires, ring any bells or bang any pots. For my part, I would prefer to say that these close-in-imagery switches are not honest eggcorns.

“Run of the mill” and “run off the mill,” as I understand these two phrases, do not seem to me to diverge enough to be interesting. But different people see different images. Chris seems to be suggesting that she sees something compelling in the “off” version. I don’t fully follow her reasoning, but I think she is saying that she feels an immediacy in the “off” version, perhaps by analogy to “right off the grill” or “run off a quick copy,” that isn’t in the “of” version. To me, “run of the mill” also suggests immediacy-something that a current session of the mill has produced. So “run off the mill” adds little to the imagery. I have never been seduced by this switch, however, so my view may be more tinged with ennui than hers.

Last edited by kem (2008-11-26 23:24:11)

Dixon—About the only aspect of the definition of “eggcorn” that most long-time forum regulars can agree on is that eggcorns require new imagery. That refinement in the definition of eggcorn is a product of this forum, so it’s unsurprising that you won’t find it on many high-profile definitions of “eggcorn”; most of the latter are based on very early posts on eggcorns on Language Log, and they generally don’t take later attempts to refine the definition into account. And they’re generally uninterested in the level of detail we’re obsessed with. You won’t have any trouble finding references to the “new-imagery requirement” here, however; searching for just the string “new imagery” brings up four whole pages of forum citations going back two years.

I’ve never seen a definition of eggcorn that was able to escape the charge of “subjectivity” (I don’t think one is possible), so impugning the new-imagery criterion on those grounds alone isn’t terribly helpful. Providing a list of widely-accepted eggcorns (say, things listed as eggcorns on Language Log, in the Database, and on sites like LanguageHat, where they know from eggcorns) that seem to break the rule would offer a far more powerful challenge to this idea that’s accepted by many on the forum.

As for the specifics of the current case, I more or less agree with Kem and David Tuggy. Chris’ enthusiastic endorsement is intriguing, but like Kem I’m not sure I understand it. I’m so far unconvinced that the of/off switch is very meaningful. If it’s an eggcorn, it doesn’t seem like a terribly interesting eggcorn.

I think there may be two issues here. One is, as you say, the degree of divergence of the imagery, and changes like of<>off or in<>on<>and often do not make striking changes. I have maintained, and am still convinced, that minor lexical and “grammatical” changes, as well as major lexical changes, inevitably involve changes of imagery (that is what they are for ), but they are usually subtle, so they don’t make for striking eggcorns.

Another issue is that an eggcorn is a persistent mistake: the perpetrator says a non-standard form thinking it is the standard form. If someone always says “run off the mill” and thinks that is the way it is always said, then that is eggcornish. But if the person sometimes says one and sometimes the other, and can make sense of both, then you are not dealing with an eggcorn. For me most if not all of the pain/pang examples fit there. I know what pain means and I know what pang means, and I can talk about birth pains or birth pangs, or hunger pains or hunger pangs, and not be confusing one for the other. At that point it is a matter of vocabulary choice, not of an error of any sort, much less an eggcorn.