Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Spotted in the wild in the comment thread here—http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news … suits.html ’[Sweden] claims to be a heaven for human rights. Many Muslim terrorists find there a safe heaven through the protection of the local government [...]’
This seems to be quite common. A google search on ‘safe heaven’ turns up ‘about 99,500’ hits, many of which seem to be bona fide eggcorns (as opposed to intentional puns or mere typos).
Chris (in an email) considers this to be a borderline case, but I think there are at least 2 points in support of this being a genuine eggcorn. First, there is the typical substitution of a more common word (heaven) for a less well-known word (haven); second, there is semantic leakage from the idea that Heaven is a safe, comfortable place, where all your trouble are over and no more harm can come to you.
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It would be wiser to let the old hands way in on this, but let me stick my neck out and say I think you’re home free with this one. I wonder what might have led Chris to give it a lukewarm reception. Perhaps it’s too natural? Beyond the good reasons you’ve given for identifying this as a nice eggcorn, there are others. First, despite appearances, the etymology of haven and heaven are completely different. Haven is inferred to come from Germanic roots, as harbour and possession : a havin’, with the sense of a place of refuge, a safe harbour. Heaven goes way back, too, and is also northern European, from “home of God” and “sky”. Note this: inferred from Proto-Indo-European base *kem- “to cover” (cf. chemise).
etymologies from Online Etymological Dictionary.
Last edited by burred (2009-04-21 14:39:01)
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I too would be interested to know more details about Chris’ rejection of this. I wonder whether she feels that “haven” and “heaven” are too close to being synonyms already; perhaps she feels this is crossing over into “flounder” territory. But I still get that twinge of wrongness when I think of “safe heaven”—a reaction that assures me we’re not dealing with two words that share too much semantic overlap in this particular context.
I don’t trust the “105,000” hits reading I got—Google numbers have gone all screwy recently—but there are lots and lots of authentic hits for this out there, and they occur on plenty of sites that seem to pay attention to good editing. I suspect it’s probably spreading among readers of sites devoted to crime, terrorism, and stocks, among others.
In any case, I think it’s a great find.
I was surprised to learn that “haven” is usually thought to be related to “have,” however. Without ever having looked it up, I just assumed that it was related to OE “haef” (“sea”). The OED mentions the latter idea as a possibility but indicates that the derivation from “have” is the more usual one. Huh.
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In my mind, the concepts of haven and heaven are quite distinct, and the etymology would seem to support this. Plus, I agree with Pat that safe heaven doesn’t sound remotely in-the-language. That would dispel the likelihood of a flounder.
At first it seemed ludicrous that one might mishear haven as heaven—perhaps that’s the reason for the rejection—but given the propensity of regional accents to behave in most unpredictable ways, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the source of the mishearing. If not, one at least has all the consonant sounds in the right place.
Finally, there’s the weighty fact that anyone not familiar with the word haven is certainly familiar with the word heaven.
So, I’m leaning more toward eggcorn on this one.
Last edited by jorkel (2009-04-21 15:12:04)
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