Eggcorns

Here's some fun from the New Scientist (not online).  Linguistic purists should look away now.

"Do you get "boggled down" trying to explain things in "lame man's terms"?  When the "chickens come home to roast" do you find yourself "cutting off your nose despite your face"?  Do these errors make you want to "kill over and die"?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you have laid an eggcorn.

Eggcorns - derived from a misspelling of "acorn" - are a particular type of language error.  Though incorrect, eggcorns are often more satisfying or poetic than the correct word or expression.    ...

Far from being insignificant errors, eggcorns show how people connect what they have heard with what they know, and they demonstrate one way that standard spelling evolves.  Dictionaries contain many words that have been shaped by popular use in an eggcorn-like fashion. "Straight laced" and "just desserts", for example, are now used more often than their original incarnations, "strait-laced" and "just deserts", and "hone in on" can be an accepted variation of "home in on".

Eggcorns often involve replacing an unfamiliar or archaic word with a more common one, such as "old-timer's" disease for Alzheimer's."

For those wanting more there is an Eggcorn Database which itself contains a link to an interesting New York Times article. 

Comments

[Sylvia]

D'oh! I didn't look away. Ow.

[jenclair]

I love anything to do with words from malapropisms to this newest term "eggcorn."

Thanks for the link!

[renee]

eeee. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Well, that's how languages evolve I guess.

[Ann Darnton]

Until last week my favourite was from the student who offered to provide me with 'egsamples' to support her argument. I could only assume that she had only ever seen it written as e.g. and thought there had to be a 'g' in there somewhere. Last week, however, in a resit paper, I came across 'co-insides', which is now running 'egsamples' pretty close.

[Litlove]

I'm fond of Anne Fadiman's one about things being taken 'for granite'.

[Mike Bowes]

My favourite is my 8 year olds "pick your choose"

[china blue]

It's amusing and interesting... but I daren't look, it will drive me potty!

(found you on Britblog by the way)

[Rich Childs]

My girlfriend always refers to me as a cunning linguist, but for the life of me I don't know why.