eggcorn

(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).

Read the other words of the week.

tmesis

This is a linguistic term (don’t fall asleep) for when you stick a word in the middle of another word or phrase. Like ‘fan-bloody-tastic’ or ‘abso-fucking-lutely’. It doesn’t have to be a swearword, but obviously swearing’s funny (and big and clever, regardless of what your parents might tell you).

George Bernard Shaw was one of the first writers to bring tmesis to the masses in Pygmalion, published in 1912, when Eliza Doolittle says ‘abso-blooming-lutely’. And in English we mainly use tmesis like this, for comic effect. But as a rhetorical device, it’s been around for a really long time. It started out in classic literature (although not with swearwords sadly). Homer (of Iliad/Odyssey fame) was a big fan of whacking some tmesis in an epic poem, as was Ovid who used it in Metamorphoses (an 11,995-line narrative poem in Latin – woop woop). Shakepeare also jumped on the tmesis bandwagon and used it in Romeo and Juliet (‘This is not Romeo, he’s some other where,’) and Richard II (this one’s a bit harder to spot, but he’s splitting ye old version of ‘however’:  ‘how heinous e’er it be’).

The word itself first turned up in the 1550s, and is Greek (although you probably guessed that from the weird-ass spelling). It means, unimaginatively, ‘to cut’.

In Australian English, tmesis is called ‘tumba rumba’, which is obviously a much better name, and one I’ll be shoehorning into every conversation I have from now on. No one knows exactly why it’s called this, but it’s probably down to a poem called Tumba-bloody-rumba (1959) by Aussie writer John O’Grady (about the small town of Tumbarumba in New South Wales). It has loads of tmeses in it, which I’m pleased to say almost all involve swearing. Here’s an extract:

This is a kangaroo I met a few weeks ago when I was in Australia.

“And the other bloke says ‘Seen’ im? Owed ’im half a bloody quid.
Forgot to give it back to him, but now I bloody did –
Could’ve used the thing me bloody self. Been off the bloody booze,
Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Read the other words of the week.

quincunx

This was a pointless answer on ‘Pointless’ (obviously) last week (they had to come up with words ending in ‘nx’ – who says daytime telly rots your brain?). A quincunx is a geometric pattern made up of four points forming a square or rectangle, with a fifth in the middle. If you’re having trouble visualising that, it’s basically the five-side on a dice (yes, yes, I know the singular is ‘die’, but saying that just makes you sound like a wanker – like those people who insist on saying ‘panino’ because ‘panini’ is plural), or the five of anything in a pack of cards.

The word comes from the name of a Roman coin which dates back to ye olde time of 211–200BC. It was worth five twelfths (‘quinque’ and ‘uncia’) of an ‘as’, which (according to my usual in-depth Wikipedia-based research) was the standard Roman bronze coin. Five dots on it showed it was a quincunx, which is why we now use it to describe that formation.

Later, people started using the word ‘quincux’ in English for other things placed in this cross-shape. Quincunxes actually turn up a lot in different places – for example, a quincunx is the standard pattern for planting in an orchard (I don’t know why, and finding out involved reading a different Wikipedia page which, frankly, I couldn’t be bothered to do). They’re also used in modern computer graphics as a pattern for multisample anti-aliasing, and in numerical analysis to describe the two-dimensional five-point stencil, a sampling pattern used to derive finite difference approximations to derivatives. Obviously we all know what those are, so I won’t bore you with the details. Oh, and Thomas Edison of lightbulb-inventing fame had a quincunx tattoo on his forearm. Rock and roll.

Read the other words of the week.

gymkhana

Photo by Christine Benton on Unsplash.

If you’re a bit posh, or you’ve ever read Jilly Cooper, then you’ll know what a gymkhana is – an event where people, usually children whose parents have lots of dosh, on horses do jumping over stuff (that’s the technical term) and other equestrian-type things. But, have you ever wondered where the word comes from? Probably not, but I’m going to tell you anyway.

Away from the UK and trashy novels (sorry Jilly, I love you really), ‘gymkhana’ is an Indian word which originally meant ‘place of assembly’. The first bit, ‘gym’ doesn’t have anything to do with the exercise place where I never go (that has its roots in Latin and Greek) – it’s from a Hindustani word, ‘gend’, which means ‘ball’. And the ‘khana’ part is an Indo-Persian/Indo-Arabic word meaning a place or a dwelling. So it literally means ‘ball-house’, which sounds a bit rude (or maybe that’s just me), but was actually used to describe somewhere where racket games were played. Over time the meaning changed to mean any type of skill-based event.

The word ‘gymkhana’ can also refer to a type of motorsport where drivers have to get round a track while performing Top-Gear like manoeuvres including reversals (don’t know what they are), 180 and 360-degree spins, parking boxes (huh?) and figure 8s. Oh, and in the days of the Raj, ‘gymkhana’ also referred to an upper-class gentlemen’s club which didn’t allow locals or women in, just to make sure all the racist/sexist bases were covered.

Read the other words of the week.