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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
the typical Aztec face was broad with a prominent, and often hooked, nose. eyes were black or brown almond-shaped, and frequently with epic anthic folds at the outer corners, one indication that the ancestors of the Mexicans had migrated into the New World from Asia in the long-distant past.
The eyes are brown almond-shaped and with epic anthic folds at the outer corners. His hair is black, coarse and straight.
The plot is really a huge badass-epic-anthic-monster and thought-out as hell, that’s why I’m making all these limitations
This certainly looks like the kind of morphemic restructuring we associate with a prototypical class of eggcorns ([epic-anthic] < [epi-canthic]). It’s not clear that it makes much sense. What is epic about an epicanthic fold? What does anthic mean? (Related to anthropic/anthropology/etc.?) Also, is this really standard for anybody?
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The first two examples are suspect of being copied one from the other or both from a single source: the coincidence of “brown almond-shaped†and “with epic anthic folds at the outer corners†would hardly be independent. (Note that the term “epicanthic fold†normally refers to the inner corners, not the outer ones.)
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The third example is bizarre —a Ballonism, I suppose.* The meaning seems to be epic-something that has nothing particular to do with anything epicanthal (upon the medial canthus of the eye).
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*Ballonisms: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2764
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2009-05-20 11:45:41)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I think it more likely that the source of the error is electronic (i.e., it is an acombination). Or it is a simple typo. With only one or two examples it is hard to be sure what is happening.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Wouldn’t surprise me at all if you’re right.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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David, here is some evidence that your idea might hold water, that “epic-anthic” bears traces of the word anthropic . Unfortunately, epicanthropic folds is also a googledeuce. But the part-of-the-way-there blend epicanthric has dozens of instances.
“Canthus” refers to the lip of a vessel.
Online fiction:
The eye holes were very small and the epicanthropic folds depicted in rubber were undetectable frauds.
(http://www.maskon.com/marti/Fiction/Favor.htm)
War memoirs:
I told him I was no anthropologist, but the epicanthropic fold of their eyes proved that the prisoners were Chinese and not North Koreans.
(http://www.tpub.com/content/USACEengine … 490058.htm)
Last edited by burred (2009-05-22 00:08:02)
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In general the references to epic anthic seem to be sort of single-yolked pails (if I may mix my forum idioms). What I mean is that someone hearing epicanthic for the first time assumes that it contains the word epic, but can assign it no meaning (a pail). Additionally, the *anthic residue remains completely opaque (i.e. the reworking of epicanthic is single-yolked).
I would have thought that antic would be a good candidate for that residue, especially in discussion of “badass” monsters. It’s a relatively low frequency word that differs by only one segment (th > t). A Google search for “epic antic” returns 24 unique hits, 20 of which appear to be written in English. Four of those are identical, from an essay on James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Fundamentally paradoxical—a comic epic, antic and grave, mordant and
heartbreaking—Ulysses is an encyclopedia of modernism and a gospel of postmodernism.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m … _n6361494/
That leaves 16 usages that might have been somehow motivated by a misunderstood and poorly remembered hearing of epicanthic, but none of the sixteen mention folds or eyes. This is not quite definitive rejection of my hypothesis, but it is far from supportive.
(Google-related curiosity: although “epic antic folds” is a googlenope, I have learned that Epic Records underwrites the antics of Ben Folds.)
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