A basket full of eggcorns

Photo: Easter Egg Hunt by Aim and shoot!

Do you know what "eggcorns" are? You've probably used them in conversation and may not have known it. "Eggcorns" are wordy slanderings which sort-of make sense and have slipped quietly, almost without notice, into spoken language. Mark Peters authors the blog Wordlust, where fresh eggcorns can be found. In a column he wrote for GOOD Magazine, Peters explains:

“Mind-bottling,” “jar-dropping,” and “lame man’s terms” are all eggcorns—a type of common and somewhat logical language goof named after a misspelling of “acorn.” Eggcorns have garnered quite a following on the web, where they were first discussed on the popular linguistics blog Language Log in 2003. If you can answer yes to any of the following questions, then you may have to check your own nest for eggcorns: When you really care about a cause, do you try to strum up support? Are you a perfectionist who hates to do things half-hazardly? Do complex moral issues fill you with a paralyzing cognitive dissidence? And finally, are you tired of paying exuberant prices?

...Eggcorns aren’t necessarily errors at all. Instead, they are a type of language evolution, and they are being closely monitored by the people who make our dictionaries; even if you can’t find your eggcorn there right now, you might soon...

An eggcorn I heard just this weekend is contraindiction. It is a cross between "contradiction" (a denial) and "contraindication" (a reason or factor that makes using a drug or medical procedure unwise or inadvisable). The person who said it has a medical background, and these two words are so close in pronunciation, he blended them without notice. (Note: He meant contradiction (a denial).)

Heard any good eggcorns lately?

Comments

[Lisa Kenney]

Ha! I'm glad there is finally a name for these. I always thought of them as "Archie Bunkerisms".

[KG]

Lisa — LOL! I think "Archie Bunkerisms" may be the original term for them. ;-)