The Eggcorn Database - v. 0.5

From Estel Telcontar in e-mail, 28 November 2004, from his brother at age 13:

A group that he is in recently won a medal, and in conversation with him, I discovered that he thought “medal” and “metal” were the same word, and that the award was so named because it was made of metal.

—–

[One of a large number of cases that turn on intervocalic flapping and the neutralization of /t/ and /d/. Often this merely yields a non-standard spelling, but sometimes that spelling can be rationalized.]