Eggcorns

[DavyR]

I'd never heard of "eggcorns" until I caught a piece about them on R4 recently. An "eggcorn" is a sort of semi-logical mis-use of language that becomes so common, it becomes absorbed into daily use and eventually replaces the original word or saying. If you've never seen "acorn" written down, and don't know the origins of the word, "eggcorn" sounds sensible - it's shaped like an egg, isn't it? Apparently "acorn" is itself an eggcorn, as the word was originally "akern" and changed its spelling and pronounciation because the appearence of the object itself reminded people of seedcorn.

 

Lots more about eggcorns here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/

 

Thanks to Chesters for his "blimp on the landscape" (on the global warming thread) that reminded me of eggcorns and led me to the database in the above link.

[Mister Toad]

Eggcelent Some of those are just great

[Peggy Burke]

Eggcelent Some of those are just great

 

Very interesting - a bit like Malapropisms. My mum, bless her, always refers to men having prostrate trouble - mind you maybe some of them do if they're reluctant risers in the morning! She also says people have been casting nasturtiums instead of aspersions.

[gozzer]

Thanks Davy, I'd never heard of them before.

 

I do know someone who always says pacific, instead of specific.

 

A friend once said, (at the time of the first gulf war), that Saddam Husain had threatened the west with " The battle of all mothers", if we interfered.

I nearly fell off my chair laughing, with the mental image it conjured up.

 

 

John.

[DavyR]

I do know someone who always says pacific, instead of specific.

 

So do I - he's the Consultant Physician who heads the Clinical Guidelines team that I work for. The secretary and I have bets on how many times he's going to say it in the course of every meeting.

 

Peggy - My old Mum also invariably refers to "prostrate trouble". And also "Westminister" instead of "Westminster".