In the course of performing my duties as the agency’s editor, I recently stumbled upon a delightful, newly coined word in the English language: eggcorn. I was double-checking a writer’s use of “reign in,” as in — “They’re working to reign in spending.” I thought to myself, “Isn’t it rein in …?” I did some googling and ran into this startling statement: “Reign in is a common eggcorn for rein in.” Wow!
What’s an eggcorn?! I wondered. More googling. Turns out it’s the unintentional substitution of a word or phrase for something that sounds similar or identical. It was coined by Geoffrey Pullum in response to a posting on a blog for linguists. The post’s writer, Mark Liberman, wrote about a woman’s substitution of the phrase egg corn for the word acorn. At Pullum’s suggestion, the phenomenon itself became known as “eggcorns.”
Some personal favorites (many of which have crossed my desk):
- “old timer’s” disease — rather than “Alzheimer’s” disease
- wheel “barrel” — rather than wheel “barrow”
- “wipe” board — rather than “white” board
- “rot” iron — rather than “wrought” iron
- “pre-Madonna” — rather than “prima donna”
- sneak “peak” — rather than sneak “peek”
- on a “terror” — rather than on a “tear”
- “sick as hell” anemia — rather than “sickle cell” anemia
And heck yes, there’s an eggcorn database.
Speaking of commonly confused words, let’s not confuse eggcorns with mondegreens.
A “mondegreen” is also a mishearing of something, but it’s a mishearing of a popular song lyric or poem. A classic example is a line from the Jimi Hendrix song “Purple Haze” — ’Scuse me while I kiss the sky — which has been misheard by fans so often as ’Scuse me while I kiss this guy, that someone has written a book on mondegreens with that title.
So how did this phenomenon come to be known as mondegreens? The term was coined by the writer Sylvia Wright in a 1954 article in Harper’s magazine. As a child, Wright heard a Scottish ballad that included the line “They hae slay the Earl of Murray, and Lady Mondegreen.” The death of the Earl and his Lady made her sad. Years later, she learned that the line actually ended “… and laid him on the green.”
We’ve all had friends who’ve done it. I discreetly corrected a college friend who was belting out Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Taking Care of Princess at the top of her lungs. Then there was that guy who, on our first (and last) date, sang along to REO Speedwagon’s Life in the Storm House. And if we’re honest, we’ve all done it ourselves … including yours truly. In front of a boy I had a crush on: Todd Rundgren’s The Last of the New Wave Riders came out of my mouth, tragically ― and loudly ― Alaska, the new wave riders! Another mondegreen I have committed, thanks to Creedence Clearwater Revival: Down on the corner, howdy in the street!
Check out this website for more mondegreen fun.
Sometimes I wish I were a mathematician. It would be almost therapeutic to work with numbers all day. Beautiful, orderly, black-and-white numbers. Instead of the unruly mess of exceptions, constant evolution, and shades of gray that we call the English language.
Most of the time, though, I’m crazy in love with this darn language. I mean, could mathematics give you eggcorns and mondegreens …?
It all comes down to the importance of building relationships.
With a few weeks under my belt, I’m starting to notice a definite theme: constant change!
