Eggcorn Forum

Despite the controversy around Annie Lehmann’s terms, I would like to submit the following two examples, hoping that I have not overlooked them somehow in the archives.

First, I received a price quotation this week for a piece of equipment that is attached to the side of a boat, but which must be maintained in a position horizontal to the water surface despite the movements of the boat, and so it is mounted on a gimbal. The word gimbal derives from the same root as Gemini, the twins, in its diminutive form of gemellus, because the mechanism is based on twin rings that pivot. Few would ever know of that origin without looking it up, so not surpringly, it was included in the price quote as a Gimble joint.

The story doesn’t stop there, however, and I’m not sure that this is just Annie Lehmann. The substitution of the word gimble recalls the nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, which begins, ”’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;”. So perhaps there is a deeper connection to the use of the term Gimble joint, especially since the instrument is normally used in close proximity to the wabes.

Further investigation showed that the connection is two-way. In particular, the gimble in the poem was replaced by gimbal in the following exposition, which produces an odd effect since neither gyre nor gimbal are nonsense words:

In Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky,” the line ”’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / did gyre and gimbal in the wabe . . .” is nonsense, but we know nevertheless that brillig must be some sort of adjective describing what sort of a day it was, that toves are nouns of some kind—slithy ones at that—and that the toves are gyring and gimbaling (i.e., performing some action) in a setting called the wabe. Asked, however, to precisely define any of these words, an English speaker could not. (http://books.google.ca/books?id=4P6mNrI … t#PPA46,M1)

The second entry is to point out a historical Annie Lehmann conversion. Hootenanny is a word of unknown origin that once referred to some random small object—i.e., a thingamajig*. The presence of “hoot” in the word surely led to its application to occasions to hoot. It eventually became associated with parties with folk or country music and audience participation. The reshaping I’m getting to was to a “hootin’ Annie,” a train that stops at every station**.

There are many subsequent examples of ‘Annie laicization’ of hootenanny (or hoot(e)naddy, hooznannie, hootnanny and hoot(e)nannie) on the web, which are how I came upon the phrase in the first place. What is ‘mute’ is whether hootenanny itself was derived in some way from ‘hoot’ in the first place:

I mostly enjoy good alt,cowpoke,hooting annie Country. (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu … d=74799189)

* “Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang” (1994). ** “Dictionary of American Regional English,” Volume II (1985) * ** This history came from a post in the The Phrase Finder, by James Briggs in 2003 (http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_boar … /1432.html)