Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A series of words that result from the misunderstanding of a word or phrase as some other word or phrase having a plausible explanation, as free reign for free rein, or to the manor born for to the manner born (from William Shakespeare's Hamlet).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun linguistics An idiosyncratic but
semantically motivated substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound identical, or nearly so, at least in the dialect the speaker uses.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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One linguist notes that the essence of an eggcorn is that it takes a stale metaphor or trite cliche and breathes fresh life into it.
Eggcorns: Folk Etymology Creating New Meanings Every Day 2006
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(NY Times article link on the Language Log) The key to an eggcorn is that it is a mis-hearing by a native speaker that has its own internal logic.
Eggcorns: Folk Etymology Creating New Meanings Every Day 2006
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Following up on this snippet I discover that the word eggcorn was coined by the Language Log, a blog well known to me and some of you, to mean an incorrect yet particularly suggestive creation.
Communication Maxine 2007
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Who is there to restrain this kudzulike growth of stupid neologisms like "eggcorn"?
"She seems like a real fighter, someone who would stick it to the lobbyist and special-interest groups that have run ramped in Washington." Ann Althouse 2008
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In response to your query about a Russian equivalent for "eggcorn," I've always been impartial to "бутерврот," and have actually seen it in non-pun-related use.
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If any of my Russian readers know of a Russian word or phrase that's sometimes replaced by a semantically clearer, though historically incorrect, version, like "eggcorn" for acorn or "poteau rose" for pot aux roses, please mention it in the comments.
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What I find so attractive about poteau(x) rose(s) (lit. "pink pole") as an equivalent for "eggcorn" is not it is a common misspelling for pot aux roses (it isn't; the substitutions are overwhelmingly jocular, including in film and literature), but that it has undergone the double eggcornification process, just like æcern-acorn-eggcorn.
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I came across a good eggcorn at work the other day.
Miscellaneous Maxine 2009
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Some subsequent debate on eggcorn terminology by the language log plaza team can be seen here.
Communication Maxine 2007
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Giggles aside, the point of eggcorn-collecting isn't to make fun but to shed light: on the ways people -- including you and I-- make meaning out of stuff we know and stuff we've heard.
GOOD Magazine: The Ill-Advised Fight Against Malapropisms 2008
treeseed commented on the word eggcorn
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
noun
Etymology: Middle English nekename additional name, alteration (resulting from misdivision of an ekename) of ekename, from eke eke, also + name name
Date: 15th century
1 : a usually descriptive name given instead of or in addition to the one belonging to a person, place, or thing
2 : a familiar form of a proper name (as of a person or a city)
February 4, 2008
immerbeta commented on the word eggcorn
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.
quote from the Eggcorn database
December 4, 2008
sionnach commented on the word eggcorn
See sionnach's eggcorn list
December 4, 2008
frogapplause commented on the word eggcorn
Linguist Geoffrey Pullum says, "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."
July 3, 2009
eggoabbas commented on the word eggcorn
A word invented based on mishearing an existing word and making up a fake etymology on the fly. E.g. a child hears that a tree grows from an "acorn" and mistakenly takes the word to "eggcorn" on the logic that it produces the tree like an egg produces a bird.
July 12, 2009
MalignantMouse commented on the word eggcorn
In September 2003, Mark Liberman reported 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.
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.
Basically, an eggcorn is a non-standard spelling/understanding of an existing phrase, which is technically or historically incorrect, but which makes sense on some level to the uninformed.
August 23, 2009
tankhughes commented on the word eggcorn
Check out the eggcorn database for more. My favorite is firstable for first of all. https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/
June 22, 2022