Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
The reshapers seem to feel a cowlick looks like the kind of messing-up of the hair that happens with a hood. I think the original has far cuter imagery, but I do like instances like this where the word boundaries have been reanalyzed. Examples:
She has a cute ridge of fur at the base of her spine that looks like she zipped up her bunny suit wrong and a stand up cowl lick of fur at the back of her ears that gives her a tomboy look from the back.
http://www.rabbittude.com/experts/tigger.html
There is then traced on the cap the position of the cowl lick and coordinates are drawn which will make possible the correct positioning of the false hair.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3557803.html
[I believe that Freepatentsonline.com has now provided us with at least 10 separate examples over the years. Ebay is still way, way ahead, but FPO has proven to be a rich resource for us. Thanks, guys!]
He has a cowl lick on the back of his head, and this funny bit of hair has grown in a full circle.
http://stealingthebink.blogspot.com/200 … ng-it.html
I came right out in the beginning before she even began to cut, telling her “please do not touch the bangs, he has a cowl lick and I always comb down his bangs straight, to proceed with cutting the sides and back short” Oh my, she cut the Bangs and uneven!
http://saginaw.citysearch.com/profile/5 … salon.html
While he sat there in front of his principal, he imagined his little third grade cowl lick blowing in the wind while he performed astounding illusions to an attentive and crowded auditorium of people.
[From the same source as the next citation]
And, in spite of his efforts, even the cowl-lick stayed. By the time he was in high school, he was performing astonishing feats of legerdemain and making objects defy gravity.
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:uC … d=10&gl=us
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I like this one. Just shows you how durn fur from the farm we are. People can no longer image a slobbery cow (and do they ever slobber) cleaning her newborn calf or remember the tight red curls on recently licked Hereford calf. So they reach for a relatively obscure word-cowl-to make up for the missing memories.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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As kem points out, a lot of eggcorns/reshapings, as with this one, seem to stem from people not being around the rural imagery that hatched the original expression.
“Free reign” (free rein) is one. “Pig style,” “road to hoe,” “marbles in one basket,” and “reap what you sew” might be others that have been discussed here.
Oddly, I grew up in a rural area, and we even had some cows when I was very young, and I didn’t really get the imagery of a cow licking a person’s or calf’s head to make his hair stand up. Added into the mix was the word colic, which I knew babies got. For years I thought the two were related, or even the same. I think I must have thought the babies’ hair was standing up.
Last edited by JonW719 (2009-02-17 14:15:08)
Feeling quite combobulated.
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