GalacticCactus Forum

Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Noemon on February 25, 2009, 09:46:17 AM

Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Noemon on February 25, 2009, 09:46:17 AM: So, just one day after I learned of the existence of a specific term for these things, I got to witness the use of one in the wild.

My manager, for reasons that aren't terribly interesting, wrote "turning over a new leaf" on a whiteboard in the hall outside of his cube. One of my coworkers saw it and began making fun of him. "Oh, you're turning over a new leaf, are you? A new leaf? Why don't you learn English, ya flippin' idiot?"

At this point, pretty much all of us stuck our heads out of our cubes (not because of his tone, which is pretty much par for the course here, but to hear what he thought the phrase was).

Manager: Huh? What do you think the phrase is?"
Coworker: It's turning over a new lease. Jeez.
Pretty much everyone in the dept: Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Neutros the Radioactive Dragon on February 25, 2009, 10:05:50 AM: *forehead slap*
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: The Genuine on February 25, 2009, 10:33:53 AM: And how did co-worker respond when his own idiocy was so publicly put on display?
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Porter on February 25, 2009, 10:38:41 AM: Am I alone in thinking that there's small utility in coining a new word to separate this phenomenon from a mondegreen?
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Noemon on February 25, 2009, 10:57:11 AM: Mondegreens are specifically misheard song lyrics. The differentiation between that and a mishearing of a word in regular speech seems worth making to me. However, I'm not sure that I see the value in distinguishing between and eggcorn and a malapropism.
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Noemon on February 25, 2009, 11:09:40 AM: Quote
And how did co-worker respond when his own idiocy was so publicly put on display?
He tried to defend himself for a little while, and then said "well, I can see that 2/3 of the office has decided to be a bunch of flippin' a-holes today. You guys suck!"

"You guys suck" is one of his signature phrases, so his saying that deflected the laughter from something that he was embarrassed about to something where people were laughing with him.
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Porter on February 25, 2009, 11:21:48 AM: I'll bet that guy's a blast at parties. :sarcasm:
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Noemon on February 25, 2009, 11:37:50 AM: :: laugh ::

You know, he's really not a bad guy. When he first started in my department he was full of bluster, and made a big show of being tough and dangerous, but he's actually a pretty decent person. He isn't terribly bright, and a combination of that fact and an unwillingness to ask for help when he's out of his depth recently came close to endangering my job (there was an approval package for the application that I was specifically hired to manage that he was supposed to do, and basically just...didn't), but he's not actually a jerk or anything.
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Narnia on February 25, 2009, 11:51:50 AM: That's strangely how I feel about Andy Bernard.
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: saxon75 on February 25, 2009, 12:04:19 PM: On a bit of a tangent, my brother-in-law is currently a freshman at Cornell, and he is in an a cappella group.
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Porter on February 25, 2009, 12:05:09 PM: :lol:
Title: Eggcorns
Post by: Jonathon on February 25, 2009, 05:39:36 PM: Quote
Mondegreens are specifically misheard song lyrics. The differentiation between that and a mishearing of a word in regular speech seems worth making to me. However, I'm not sure that I see the value in distinguishing between and eggcorn and a malapropism.
Malapropisms involve words whose meaning the speaker doesn't know or whose meaning doesn't fit what the speaker intended. Eggcorns make some sort of sense in context, much like folk etymologies. I think the boundary between the two words is somewhat fuzzy, though.
Title: Re: Eggcorns
Post by: Brinestone on April 02, 2014, 01:07:47 PM: I saw an interesting one today. It was a review of a school on greatschools.org. The mother said that the teacher wouldn't allow her daughter to accel because there were too many kids in the class who were behind. She used the word accel at least two or three times in this way.

I can see how people would get confused. Students who excel are sometimes put in accelerated classes. I'm actually surprised I've never seen it before.
Title: Re: Eggcorns
Post by: Jonathon on April 02, 2014, 01:27:54 PM: Interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not uncommon, but it's hard to find by googling since there are apparently a lot of companies named Accel.
Title: Re: Eggcorns
Post by: Annie Subjunctive on April 05, 2014, 03:08:17 PM: I was working on a project with the Dean of Education for a database to collect information from iPad apps and allow teachers to access it. It was the Dean's pet project and he really wanted to name it Accel. We all tried, on multiple occasions, to convince him not to name a software Accel but he didn't see the problem with it.
Title: Re: Eggcorns
Post by: pooka on April 27, 2014, 06:25:12 PM: I suppose he didn't find it sounded at all like Excel?
Title: Re: Eggcorns
Post by: Annie Subjunctive on April 28, 2014, 09:22:07 PM: Didn't think it mattered because they were different applications.