Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I have posted a blog musing inspired by this discussion:
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=3573
Kem, although I quote you, I don’t name you. I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to use your handle or your real name. Let me know and I will be happy to give credit where it is due.
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I enjoyed reading your musings, nilep, thanks for directions to your blog. I managed somehow to resist make a post about moaning eggcorns, however. In fact, your theory about the ease of eggcorning fuzzy zone words is very credible. I went around testing it a bit with words from different levels of the Kilgarriff lemma list, and found that two words found on the list are indeed difficult to tie together through an eggcorn. “moan”, for example, was not easy, and could not be tied to “morning”, another listed word.
I hope you weren’t thinking of any overeager newbies in particular when you said that you fully expected someone to find an eggcorn for “moan” nonetheless “within a few days.” In direct contradiction to what I said 5 sentences ago, I can’t hold myself back for that long. These are not solid eggcorns, as you might have predicted – but are also not bad malapropisms/homophone substitutions. (that last qualification reminds me of another post I’ve just read, about structurally ambiguous phrasing). I suppose that these should really be placed as a comment to your blog, but they’re just not that serious. Hubris has its limits.
Football headline:
Furious Bruce moan down by two-goal Owen
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q … _n9709472/)
Latest news:
Murder squad detectives are investigating claims that Mr Bowman was moan down by a car and then hacked to death with a machete after a row about a girl erupted into a bloody gang fight.
(http://scotland.bnp.org.uk/?s=bladed) Yikes
Young drivers forum:
first guy: The current tv ad campaign showing a home video type thing with the kid being moan down in the road is hard hitting, but it still doesn’t stop kids messing about on or near roads.
second guy: taht advert with teh kid being moan down jsut looks fake.
(http://briskoda.net/archive/index.php?t-51287.html)
Church forum:
the car is fixed, the lawn is moan, the wifey woman is haaapy, ted is king of his castle, and all is right with the world. (http://www.worthychristianforums.com/Pa … 83205.html)
Web catalogue from Greece:
Catalog » Tools » Gardening tools » Lawn moaning machines
(http://www.megamarket.gr/lawnmoaningmac … 91_en.html)
Tech support forum:
doddsy: snoooooooooze …..mmmmmmmmmm
Mikev2.0: Go moan your lawn doddsy, and leave the snoozing to others.
howste: No lawn moaning for me today. It’s busy being covered with a fresh blanket of white stufff right now.
nickslick74: Wuss! A real diehard lawn moaner would blow the snow off and then moan the lawn...
(http://www.techimo.com/forum/imo-commun … e-274.html)
??? Is this for real?
Pink pages:
Remembering klakritz’s “lauded”, I looked just to make sure – and Bob’s your uncle: laud moan s are epidemic in the pink pages. Not for prime time, however. (259 ughits).
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burred wrote:
I hope you weren’t thinking of any overeager newbies in particular when you said that you fully expected someone to find an eggcorn for “moan” nonetheless “within a few days.”
No, actually I was thinking more in terms of the “magazine cover curse” or variants on Murphy’s Law: if I say it’s unlikely to happen, doesn’t that make it more likely to happen?
Nice work on the “moan down” finds. I especially like lawn moaning, though I suspect, as you seem to, that the penultimate “Tech support forum” usage is probably some sort of in-joke or other non-bona fide usage.
I had actually thought of mode as the most likely near-homophone for moan. I had somehow forgotten the actual homophone mown, probably because I use the regular mowed myself. Now that I think about it, there are also the near-homophones mowin’ and Moen (a brand name). But even if these occur as malapropisms or even eggcorns proper, I still think that they are unlikely to inhabit “large fuzzy spots” of the blunt-brunt-brute sort.
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