Eggcorn Forum

“Anthem” derives ultimately from the Greek “antiphon,” a word for a song sung in alternate sections by two choruses. “Anthem” has no historical connection the word “hymn,” which comes from a different Greek word, a generic term for an ode or a song. Since the second syllable of “anthem” and “hymn” rhyme, and since both words refer to types of song, in particular to songs of a solemn or exalted nature (cf. church hymns, national anthems), it was inevitable that the two words would one day be blended.

The inevitable happened a long time ago. The eggcorn “anthymn” has been around at least four hundred years. In English Past and Present, a nineteenth century printing of a series of lectures by Richard Chenevix Trench (Project Gutenberg text at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20900/20 … 0900-h.htm), the writer refers to a seventeenth century divine who spelled “anthem” as “anthymn.” The confusion, writes Trench, “rests plainly on a wrong etymology, even as this spelling clearly betrays what that wrong etymology is.” If the word “eggcorn” had been available to Trench, he could have saved himself sixteen words.

Modern examples of this eggcorn can be found on the web. There aren’t a lot of examples, perhaps a score (pun partly intended). Here are three of them:

Discussion of a music album “The first one is quite Scottish as well (if you remember the film) – and there is one in the middle that has been mentioned as a potential national anthymn as well.”

A post on a writers’ (!) forum “i.e. the ‘bigger is better’ anthymn sung by so many American”

Title of a post on a CD site “Crysalis is a great moody anthymn ”