Friday, January 27, 2017

Pass the Eggcorn, Please!

Yum...eggcorns.  I love'em - don't you? Oh wait, do you even know what an eggcorn is?


When an egg meets that special acorn it's been waiting for (oops...I've been reading too many romances lately - sorry about that!).  Actually, it's a word or phrase that sounds like and is mistakenly used in a seemingly logical or plausible way for another word or phrase either on its own or as part of a set expression.  Maybe you've seen my previous posts (here and here), but eggcorns continue to fascinate me.

There's the list on Wikipedia you can look at (I've seen for all intensive purposes instead of for all intents and purposes but I have yet to see on the spurt of the moment instead of on the spur of the moment - thank goodness!). But it's rather short.

For more fun with eggcorns, you can check out the Eggcorn Database.

Apparently 2015 was the year of the eggcorn, because that's the year Merriam-Webster added it to its dictionary and everyone was writing about it: NPR asked their listeners to submit their favorite eggcorns and settled on the top 100 .

And Time magazine's contribution on the subject mentioned one of my favorites: the you've got another thing coming taking the place of you've got another think coming. (That one is actually on my style sheet setup, I've seen it so often!)

So what eggcorns have you served up lately? Or which ones have you come across on the wild, wild Web?