About

The idea to embark on this project hatched in November 2004. I had been interested in language for a long time and become an avid reader of the numerous linguistics blogs that thrive in the English-speaking segment of the blogosphere. Six months earlier I had started a bilingual blog of my own. During the same period, I was working on my web site development and programming skills by learning a little Python and diving into the code of the WordPress blogging tool, which is written in PHP and interfaces with a MySQL Database.

When I became more and more taken with the concept of eggcorns, which had been popping up on my favorite blogs, it occurred to me that it would be useful to collect them in a lexical database with a web interface for entering and retrieving records on individual eggcorns. After a number of rather pitiful attempts to create such a tool from scratch, I realized that it would be much easier to bend the WordPress blogging software to my needs. I started customizing (well, hacking really) an alpha-version of the code, and the result is the site you are perusing.

But maybe I should briefly explain what eggcorns are.

The word _eggcorn_ was coined collectively by the linguists who write at the excellent group blog Language Log. Linguists collect usage examples. Unlike language teachers or the often self-styled grammar experts who complain in the press about the decay of English, they are not picky: the actual, real-life use is what counts, and the most interesting bits — those that might reveal something about how real people apprehend their language — often stretch the received rules of correctness.

In September 2003, Mark Liberman reported (Egg corns: folk etymology, malapropism, mondegreen, ???) an incorrect yet particularly suggestive creation: someone had written “egg corn” instead of “acorn”. It turned out that there was no established label for this type of non-standard reshaping. Erroneous as it may be, the substitution involved more than just ignorance: an acorn is more or less shaped like an egg; and it is a seed, just like grains of corn. So if you don’t know how _acorn_ is spelled, _egg corn_ actually makes sense.

Mark Liberman’s colleague Geoffrey Pullum chimed in and suggested that this type of linguistic error should be called an _eggcorn_. Then Arnold Zwicky, wrote an enlightening article (Lady Mondegreen says her peace about egg corns) in which he gave his blessing to the term _eggcorn_ and explained that new labels for spontaneous reshapings of known expressions are sorely needed, and listed the aspects under which eggcorns overlap with but yet differ from known classes of lexical creativity: malapropisms, mondegreens, folk etymologies etc. Mark Liberman subsequently gave some more thought to eggcorn terminology.

Since then, the Language Log linguists and many others have gone eggcorn-hunting. Eggcorns have turned out to be surprisingly common: even the seemingly outlandish _egg corn_ is not an individual one-off error, but has been reinvented many times over.

The criteria of how to identify eggcorns have also been clarified. Not every homophone substitution is an eggcorn. The crucial element is that the new form makes sense: for anyone except lexicographers or other people trained in etymology, more sense than the original form in many cases. The more brazen among the eggcorn users may eloquently defend and explain the underlying semantics (metaphors, metonymies, convincing but erroneous accounts of the supposed history). Thus, thumbs down for _definately_ and _they’re / there house_ (not eggcorns, just phonetic misspellings: the non-standard versions don’t make any more sense than, or reinterpret the meaning of the standard versions), but thumbs up for _for all intensive purposes_.

There are, of course, borderline cases. For some low-frequency examples it is hard to tell what was going on in the writer’s mind; on the other end of the scale we find reshapings that are already so widespread that they frequently occur in journalistic writing or are standard forms in some regional dialects of English. The latter are not necessarily reinvented every time they occur, but learnt#[1]. Some of them will enter the dictionaries, marked as folk etymologies.

The aim of this site is to collect eggcorns and texts that analyze them. I have found a handful of them myself and am adding speculations and observations where they occur to me, but I do not pretend to be the ultimate source of linguistic wisdom. Whoever wishes to criticize or to add to what is noted here is very welcome to do so. Every entry has a comment area for this purpose. (Turning a blogging tool into a lexical database has certainly advantages.)

I am internally eternally grateful to the Language Log linguists for introducing me to eggcorns, and to several of them for their kindness; I also thank the denizens of the #wordpress IRC channel for helping me understand the code, teaching me PHP, listening to my obscure talk about semantics of expressions and reanalytical reshapings, and even catching on and starting to collect eggcorns — from their own writing, in a few cases.

Working on this site (the eggcorn collecting, the coding, and the design) is enjoyable and instructive. As I write, the work on the structural elements is still in progress, and new features and improvements will be gradually added.

I hope the friends of the eggcorn will find the Eggcorn Database useful.

Chris Waigl

—-

[1]: As a non-native speaker of English, I can attest to learning _tow the line_ — not in the sense of being taught, but in the sense of picking up this expression and the underlying metaphor as what I presumed to be standard English.

| permanent link | Chris W. (admin), 2005/02/13 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by Jersey , 2005/02/18 at 9:11 pm

    I really think you people should look into spell-check and auto-type tools. About half of the eggcorns I’ve seen come from word processing tools and the lion’s share of the rest are simply typos.

    I wouldn’t consider someone who stutters to have a problem understanding language.

  2. 2

    Commentary by chris waigl , 2005/02/19 at 12:23 am

    It is, indeed, important to differentiate eggcorns (which are intentional non-standard spellings) from inadvertent typos. Please see Arnold Zwicky’s Lady Mondegreen says her peace about egg corns on the different types of reshapings.

    Furthermore, eggcorns are not about having a problem understanding language, but precisely on the faculty of generating meaning. I am unclear about your reference to stuttering.

  3. 3

    Commentary by Piedrasyluz , 2005/02/26 at 5:09 am

    Here are a few more, but I’ll refrain from entering them because I can’t seem to get the formatting right:

    Chester drawers (chest of drawers)
    boom to the economy (boon to the economy)
    chalked full (chock full)
    down the pipe (down the pike)
    fair to midland (fair to middling)

  4. 4

    Commentary by Byron Black , 2005/03/05 at 12:49 pm

    My fave (from the web, natch) comes from a medical report written by a filipina nurse, who confirmed that ‘the patient was circus-sized’.

    Nyaaaah,

    BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
    ‘Fruit-Aryan’

  5. 5

    Commentary by J. Anderson , 2005/03/07 at 3:55 pm

    I just shutter when I read some of these things…

  6. 6

    Commentary by Karen L. Lew , 2005/03/10 at 1:44 am

    One I did myself, back in the early days of my writing career: “Cut off his nose despite his face” rather than “Cut off his nose to spite his face.” Heck, my version made sense!

  7. 7

    Commentary by Jay Caplan , 2005/03/15 at 11:18 pm

    Please czeck out the above website. It is devoted (someone who has had his voting rights removed?) to our own way of speaking here in Bawlamer, Merrilyn

  8. 8

    Commentary by Jay Caplan , 2005/03/15 at 11:19 pm

    The website is:
    www.baltimorehon.com/

  9. 9

    Commentary by Dorothy , 2005/04/11 at 5:41 pm

    One that we’ve seen a lot of lately is Last Rights (Last Rites).
    I know several people who use flustrated, which does seem to mean a combination of flustered and frustrated.

  10. 10

    Commentary by Chris Waigl , 2005/04/11 at 6:40 pm

    “Last rights” has been added to the rite»right entry. Thanks.

    Please don’t add new eggcorns here, though. The Contribute page is the one to use.

  11. 11

    Commentary by Georganna Hancock , 2005/04/12 at 12:11 am

    This is so much fun, I just had to register; however, I don’t see where the profiles appear, or are you just curious about the people who would deign to delight in others’ errors?

  12. 12

    Commentary by Robert N. Eaton , 2005/05/17 at 1:46 am

    Delighted by this site. I read User Friendly daily, and this was their LOTD (Link of the day.)

    The citation concerning “baited breath” reminded me of a short verse I committed to memory longer ago than I care to remember, which used that phrase to good effect/affect.

  13. 13

    Commentary by Robert N. Eaton , 2005/05/17 at 1:53 am

    The citation concerning the phrase “baited breath” reminded me of a short verse I committed to memory more years ago than I like to remember.

    The Cruel Clever Cat, by Ogden Nash (I think!)

    Sally, having eaten cheese,
    Directs down holes the scented breeze,
    Enticing, thus, with baited breath
    Nice mice to an untimely death.

    RNE

  14. 14

    Commentary by Jeff Archer , 2005/05/17 at 7:28 pm

    Anyone ever heard of a pun? That’s what most of these seem to be, in one form or another. That or typos…

  15. 15

    Commentary by Patricia Mackenzie , 2005/06/06 at 7:17 am

    This site is simply brilliant. I’ve been laughing so hard, I’m crying. Okay, maybe I’m an elitist, but in my opinion you’ve come up with yet another example of ways in which the English language is being dumbed down (ref. “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” for the punctuation issue, for instance).

  16. 16

    Commentary by Jan Baum , 2005/06/14 at 9:24 pm

    I keep hearing two pairs of glasses. I know one pair of glasses is correct but is two “pairs?” Seems like it should be two pair.

    A gas station in town has a marquee that reads “we are highering.”

  17. 17

    Commentary by H. Horseman , 2005/08/01 at 9:17 pm

    I love your site. I was a “technical editor” in an Air Force office for several years. I thought I had seen everything, but you have shown me that I did not see it all. How about “such that?” This was a common term in military writing. I never liked it and still don’t.
    Thanks for a great site.
    H. Horseman

  18. 18

    Commentary by Joe Fineman , 2005/08/02 at 3:40 am

    “Cruel Clever Cat” is by Geoffrey Taylor.

  19. 19

    Commentary by L. Boxall , 2005/09/29 at 8:36 am

    Maybe I’m very tired and should be sleeping instead of typing, but I’m failing to find any distinction between “eggcorn” and “malapropism.” Could someone enlighten me on the origins of the term eggcorn and whether it is in fact a simile for malapropism.

  20. 20

    Commentary by David K. , 2006/05/05 at 7:14 pm

    Now THIS site is what makes the internet fun, intelligent, of-the-moment — and a genuine HOOT. Which rhymes with “shoot,” which gained me my first-ever entry on Eggcorn (for my American Idol piece on Nightcharm.com)

    BRAVO folks…

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.