Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A shell of one’s former self
vs.
A shadow of one’s former self
I went to look up this idiom today and was a bit surprised to see the shadow variant listed, but no mention of the shell variant. I do recall hearing both—and both could be technically correct—but I would suggest that one is decidedly idiomatic while the other is a widely used spinoff. Eggcorn or a gray area?
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Not alike enough phonologically to be an eggcorn, in my judgment. I can’t imagine saying one thinking it was what others were saying when they said the other.
*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 mostly agree David, except under the foggy-recollector scenario in which an utterer doesn’t remember the original but manages to produce something with vivid imagery which is like-sounding enough. One really has to wonder how two similar sounding phrases come into existence.
My other thought is that the change is intentional; Perhaps some struggled with making sense of the shadow and decided to go with a shell instead. Or, perhaps the original was adapted to describe the bombed out “shells” of buildings during wartime; So, in that circumstance, something certainly could be reduced to a shell of it’s former self.
Last edited by jorkel (2009-01-23 15:17:19)
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Similar-sounding phrases come about all the time by “normal†syntactic means: we don’t always try just to reproduce clichés that we have heard. Foggy recollections doubtless enter in to those “normal†processes, too.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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