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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2019-04-10 16:52:34

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

The straw that brought the camels back

Camels have a reputation for eating almost anything that won’t kill them, so the promise of straw that induced their return needn’t have been of any special quality. Maybe any straw will bring a camel back.

Your trust issues were there through out your relationship. Your final fight, which you find a silly disagreement, was the straw that brought the camels back in his eyes.
Yahoo questions

The last lunch struck a cord and brought on a smile; the straw that brought the camel back!
online story

Leaving her was the straw that brought the camels back
tabloid

Today was the straw that brought the camels back when I heard a sales associate bashing me for accidentally dropping a product.
consumer complaint

How might the perps be seeing this one? Maybe as a version of bringing the chickens home to roost? The camels were not coming back until that last straw was added? Otherwise, it’s a sweet mondegreen.

Last edited by David Bird (2019-04-10 16:58:47)

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#2 2019-04-11 12:57:26

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

Re: The straw that brought the camels back

First class! (Whether or not or to whatever extent it is an eggcorn.)

I was entering it in my database: I had forgotten how many variants I already had of this phrase. “That was:

the bra that stroked the camel’s back (you may remember my son’s drawing of this)
the hay that struck the camel’s back
the camel that broke the straw’s back
what finally broke the straw
the camel’s back that pushed it over the edge
that broke the last straw on the camel’s back
the straw that broke the camel
the straw that broke the feather’s back
the ice that broke the camel’s back
the straw that broke your back
the needle that broke the camel’s back
.
Most of these were, of course, one-off errors as far as I know, ineligible for eggcornhood.
.
Re how they might be thinking of it, camels are surly beasts: maybe the straw (for whatever reason) brings the ill-temper back into the person affected (or into his eyes, in your first example). Of course in your second example it is a smile rather than a surly attitude that is restored…
.
Striking a cord (or five) is of course the normal way to play the guitar (though the guitar strings are not woven the way a prototypical cord might be. But misspelling chord as cord is plenty common (so is the return trip), so maybe that is all that is happening.
.
Still, it joins:
strike accord
ring a chord
strike a bell
strike deep chords into you

and
strike a two-edged sword with you
.
With Maundy Thursday coming up, I catch myself wondering if the last lunch (that strikes such a cord or discord as the case may be) is the modern version of that other memorable meal?

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2019-04-12 11:41:03)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#3 2019-04-15 11:29:45

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

Re: The straw that brought the camels back

I do love the destabilizing cannonade of your lists, David. Hilarious.

It stands to reason that the camel’s feedbag can only take so much roughage. Or there may be a safety release for the howdah’s cargo compartment before the poor beast is overtaxed.

The government’s sale of parts of the biggest Danish energy company to Goldman Sachs was the straw that broke the camel’s bag.
political chronicle

The current crisis is considered in Chad as multidimensional, insofar as the security risk due to Boko Haram has been the last straw that broke the camel’s bag, in a context of chronical food and nutrition insecurity, environmental degradation, agro-pastoral tensions, deficit of basic services and lack of sustainable livelihoods.
conference abstract

Marto said he was stuck with another woman whom he would bring home. This had been the so-called straw that broke the camel’s bag and Irina, on the other side of the line, completely lost it.
online fiction

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