Big Oaks From Little Eggcorns Grow

Huh?  Shouldn’t that be “acorns”?  Well, yes, and the aphorism about small beginnings, which was a favorite of my Dad’s, is the perfect way to illustrate one of my own favorite linguistic missteps.

An eggcorn is an error in which meaning and sound combine to create a word or phrase that almost makes sense.  The label was coined by the linguists at Language Log,  when Mark Liberman reported an incorrect yet particularly suggestive creation: someone had written “egg corn” instead of “acorn”. An acorn is more or less shaped like an egg, and it is a seed, just like grains of corn, so egg corn actually makes sense.

Once you start looking for them, eggcorns pop up everywhere – in major metropolitan newspapers, comments and blog posts, and feature articles in magazines.  (Note: They are not the same thing as mondegreens, because mondegreens typically do not make sense in the context.)

Here are two eggcorns I’ve collected in the past couple of weeks; the correct term is shown in brackets:

• “They are always yelling at you or preaching some insane dribble” [drivel].
• “…suspended above the ground by guide wires” [guy wires]

The website http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ provides a few more examples, such as coming down the pipe instead of coming down the pike and tow the line instead of toe the line. Another common eggcorn is a tough road to hoe [a tough row to hoe].

Naturally, eggcorns have their own website, which features a comprehensive database of eggcorns, with several examples for each one and an analysis of the probable origin.  You can amuse yourself by reading about youthamism [euphemism], cacoughany [cacophony], bread [bed] and breakfast, and more.

If you’re puzzled about an idiom or common expression that has no meaning in your experience, check out http://www.whatdoesthatmean.com/, where you’ll find the original source of expressions like “aim for the cheap seats” and “three sheets to the wind.”

Which leads to Wordorigins.org, a resource that describes itself this way: “devoted to the origins of words and phrases, or as a linguist would put it, to etymology. Where words come from is a fascinating subject, full of folklore and historical lessons. Often, popular tales of a word’s origin arise. Sometimes these are true; more often they are not. While it can be disappointing when a neat little tale turns out to be untrue, almost invariably the true origin is just as interesting.”

So now that you have an excuse to spend hours on the Internet, go forth and surf…but don’t forget to pay attention to eggcorns wherever you find them (even in the Gray Lady herself).