An eggcorn sounds like some confection you'd eat on either Easter or Halloween. It's not.
It's a word or phrase that you say when you've heard the right thing wrong.
Most often, a person will hear the word and say it slightly wrong. Other times, one might spell out the word that sounds the same but is spelled wrong.
"Eggcorn" itself is an eggcorn. Some people don't know the correct pronunciation of acorns, and they instead call them eggcorns. Thus the name of this language quirk.
Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum coined the word eggcorn, and he added a few guidelines.
◼️ An eggcorn has to make some sense. Calling a car a faucet is not an eggcorn.
◼️ The mistake must have logic within. An acorn does look a little like an egg — an egg that might grow into a tree.
I can't do better than Pullum's admiration of the concept:
"It would be so easy to dismiss eggcorns as signs of illiteracy and stupidity, but they are nothing of the sort. They are imaginative attempts at relating something heard to lexical material already known."
Adults use eggcorns all the time.
My stomach hurt so much, I was lying on the bed in a feeble position.
Of course, you mean the fetal position, all curled up like a fetus. But you probably are feeling feeble, too.
I was able to learn a little while eardropping on my parents this morning.
This should be "eavesdropping," but your ears are doing the work.
The killer in the mystery bloodgeoned the victim.
Yes, a bludgeoning can be pretty bloody.
The college grad soon learned this was a doggie-dog world.
Yes, the real world could wear you down so that you feel like a dog, but the true phrase is "dog-eat-dog," which is really far worse.
I was determined to nip this problem in the butt.
Dogs have been known to nip at posteriors. But the real phrase is "nip in the bud," as in stop something in the early stages, such as a flower bud.
My nephew has turned into quite a rebel rouser.
Your nephew is more likely a rabble-rouser, one who can stir a rowdy crowd into a mob. A few in the rabble might become rebels, though.
Once in Washington, D.C., I met a person who said he was in the city to testify before a congressional committee about the dangers of table salt. This seems mysterious to me. Was bacteria the problem? When I finally got around to asking him what he would talk about, he described a terrible accident his brother had while using a ... table saw.
Far more endearing are the eggcorns that kids come up with. I asked many friends and family members to reveal the eggcorns of youngsters they have known. Many of them might not meet Pullum's strict guidelines, but I still like them.
One child used human instead of humid.
It's a human day today!
Well, it's hard to argue with that.
That whirlybird in the sky might be a heckaropter. Or a hopticopter. Or maybe a helicopter.
Another child would call broccoli little trees. One boy would have a sandwionch for lunch, which sounds like an elaborate kitchen tool.
In one friend's house, Bill Nye the Science Guy became the Sinus Guy.
One young man used to be fond of bagel tigers, though he likely meant Bengal tigers, which have much bigger teeth.
One child thought people would deliver rude compliments. He meant insults or rude comments.
One young cousin kept wondering why people kept talking about baby cheeses at Christmas. It turns out they weren't talking about mini cheese wheels. They were talking about the baby Jesus.
Another cousin would want to go to the shobba bop when he needed a haircut. His parents made him go to the barbershop, instead.
One girl thought those cream-filled cookies were called Orioles, instead of Oreos. Lucky for her, she grew up in the Baltimore area.
One child, when her head was hurting, would say she had a migration. Maybe the pain was moving from one side of her head to the other? Her sister thinks she meant a migraine.
I know a few of us wondered who Chester Drawers was and why he was in the bedroom. It turns out he was a chest of drawers.
One boy, when he saw a person smoking a cigarette, thought the activity was smoking secrets. Secrets can go up in flames.
One child at a pond was determined to reach a lily pad. Only he called them iPads.
My dad would often tell my mom he was going to see P. I didn't know any family friend named P, and I even began to worry about how often he went to see this P person. Finally, I learned that he was going to CP. He worked at the Cerebral Palsy center, where he made specialized equipment for kids with cerebral palsy, or CP.
I spent most of my work life on a newspaper's night copy desk. One co-worker's son asked just what a coffee desk did. A lot of us do need caffeine.
One boy went along with his mother to a college class. He asked his mom whether the college is where they make the cheese. Turns out he was thinking of cottage cheese.
One girl was singing along to Kenny Rogers' "Lucille."
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille, with 400 children and a crop in the field.
No surprise that she left. But, really, she had four hungry children.
One toddler believes that a certain nut is called cat shoes. She means cashews.
I read that one little boy kept telling his parents he wanted to go see Nick Root. They had no idea who Nick Root was. As it turns out, he wanted them to take the scenic route.
Reach Bernadette at
bkwordmonger@gmail.com
Style on 05/25/2020