(Photo by Caleb Lucas on Unsplash.)
An eggcorn is when you mistakenly use a word or phrase for another word or phrase that sounds similar. But the end result still makes a weird kind of sense. Wow, that explanation sucked all the fun out of it, didn’t it? Sorry. Eggcorns are things like:
‘it’s a bit of a damp squid’ (should be squib, but it still make sense cos squids are wet)
‘for all intensive purposes’ (should be ‘intents and purposes’, but ‘intensive purposes’ sound like very important things)
‘he’s a card shark’ (it’s a sharp, not a shark, but still makes sense because we use shark to mean someone who’s really good at stuff, like a pool shark).
The name ‘eggcorn’ was coined by a linguistics professor called Geoffrey Pullum. He read an article by a linguist called Mark Liberman about a woman who used the word ‘egg corn’ instead of ‘acorn’ (because acorns look like eggs in egg cups), and pointed out that there was no name for this. Pullum suggested that we all just call them ‘eggcorns’. So now we do. I think I love Geoffrey Pullum.
Because the internet is a wonderful thing, there’s a whole website devoted to eggcorns. 648 and counting…
Bonus word: malapropism
A malapropism is the same as an eggcorn in that it’s when you use the wrong word in place of one which sounds similar. The difference is that the end result doesn’t make sense and you end up with something humorous (another super-fun explanation there, sorry). A couple of famous examples of malapropisms include ‘And then he’ll have only channel vision’ (Frank Bruno talking about Mike Tyson) and ‘Don’t upset the apple tart’ (Bertie Ahearn, former Taoiseach of Ireland).
The word malapropism comes from Mrs Malaprop, a character in a play called ‘The Rivals’ (1775, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan), who often mixes up her words. Her name’s probably based on the French phrase ‘mal à propos’, which means ‘poorly placed’.
According to the New Scientist, an office worker described a colleague as ‘a vast suppository of information’ (presumably they meant ‘repository’). They then apparently apologised for their ‘Miss-Marple-ism’, which is a malapropism for the word malapropism. HEAD EXPLODES.
Bonus, bonus word: malaphor
Wow, I’m really spoiling you this week, aren’t I? A malaphor is an informal term (which means it’s not really a proper word, hence it being a buy-one-get-one-free type of deal) for when you mix your metaphors, idioms, clichés or aphorisms. So that’s when you mash two phrases together like ‘we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it’, ‘you hit the nail on the nose’ or ‘stop winding my leg’ (© my sister, 1986).