Language Log

Eggcorn, that most successful of Language Log's neoLogisms, has entered another major dictionary. Back in September 2010, I reported that eggcorn had been included in the latest updates to the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as the dictionaries available at Oxford Dictionaries Online (New Oxford American Dictionary on the US side and the Oxford Dictionary of English on the UK side). The latest dictionary to jump on the eggcorn bandwagon is the American Heritage Dictionary, the fifth edition of which was released this week. Here's the entry that's available on their new website:

egg·corn (ĕg′ kôrn′)
n. A series of words that result from the misunderstanding of a word or phrase as some other word or phrase having a plausible explanation, as free reign for free rein, or to the manor born for to the manner born (from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet).

I especially appreciate the "plausible explanation" part of the definition, since that was a key element missing from the Oxford entries.

But wait, there's more!

None of the words in the expression "woe is me" are especially rare or obsolete, but the syntactic structure and semantic interpretation are definitely archaic. If you learned the expression by listening rather than by reading, you might well go for some alternative way of composing similar-sounding words to arrive at the contextually apparent meaning, like "whoa as me".

That's not much closer to being compositional in contemporary English, but it's certainly no further away either. And at least a few people seem to have taken that route, including one that I noticed in a recent weblog comment.

Patrick Howley ("Standoff in D.C.", The American Spectator 10/8/2011) describes his activities as a journalist and agent provocateur at the OWS protests in Washington D.C.:

The fastest-running protesters charged up the steps of Washington's National Air and Space Museum Saturday afternoon to infiltrate the building and hang banners on the "shameful" exhibits promoting American imperialism. As the white-uniformed security guards hurried to physically block the entrances, only a select few — myself, for journalistic purposes, included — kept charging forward. […]

Minutes earlier, I had been among those blocking major D.C. roads chanting "We're unstoppable" — and from beneath my unshaven left-wing altar ego, I worried that we might actually be. But just as the lefties couldn't figure out how to run their assembly meeting (many process points, I'm afraid to report, were left un-twinkled), so too do they lack the nerve to confront authority. From estimates within the protest, only ten people were pepper-sprayed, and as far as I could tell I was the only one who got inside the museum.

This morning on the radio, I heard this from Therese Madden of FIT:

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"We are Food Justice…"

That's just one of the chants heard on the lawn outside of the Independence Visitor Center on a recent Saturday afternoon. The hot sun did nothing to damper the enthusiasm of the 120 young people, mostly between the ages of 15 and 20.

Thomas Friedman, "I am a Man", NYT 5/14/2011:

Watching the Arab uprisings these days leaves me with a smile on my face and a pit in my stomach. The smile comes from witnessing a whole swath of humanity losing its fear and regaining its dignity. The pit comes from a rising worry that the Arab Spring may have been both inevitable and too late. If you are not feeling both these impulses, you’re not paying attention.

Paul Brians' Common Errors in English Usage:

Just as you can love someone from the bottom of your heart, you can also experience a sensation of dread in the pit (bottom) of your stomach. I don’t know whether people who mangle this common expression into “pit in my stomach” envision an ulcer, an irritating peach pit they’ve swallowed or are thinking of the pyloric sphincter; but they’ve got it wrong.

Spotted at CNN: "Federal employees breathe sign of relief on budget deal", 4/8/2011. The obligatory screenshot, in case they fix it:

I've noticed recently that some people seem to have learned the expression "a case in point" as "a case and point". (And Ben Zimmer entered this one in the eggcorn database back in 2005…) For example, David M. Goodman, The demanded self: Ethics and identity in modern psychologies:

It is singularity of one's own voice, a coagulation of multiple introjected voices stagnately setting the basis of one's present voice. This can be seen in eating disorders as well. Autism is a case and point.

Brought to my attention by reader JS:

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish a spelling mistake from an eggcorn.  Either way, I've always been impressed by the possibilities for analytic creativity afforded by the English orthographic system. And somehow these little morpho-analogical poems are more impressive when they appears in serious publications.

Rosey Billington sent in this passage from a blog post:

I used to hate staying in my room. I used to hate sitting on my chair for hours, being unproductive and just dwindling my thumbs away.  I had to constantly walk about the house, which I still do…But I also hated the fact that I had such a small room and nothing was in my room.

Paul Kay:

The website of a Palo Alto yoga emporium sports the following bit of pricing information:

monthly unlimited automatic with drawl ** $125

The doubly starred footnote explains:

** Requires a 6-month commitment.

Which seems to mean you can have all the yoga lessons you can stand if you sign up for an automatic withdrawal of $125/mo. from your bank account (for at least six months).

For the eggcorn file, from the buffet at our Hawaii hotel. It brings to mind the legend of the Wandering Jew, fated to peregrinate the world with a blintz in his breast pocket until someone says to him, "What is that, a kuhnish?"

From Erick Erickson, "A Concern About Reince Priebus", RedState 1/3/2010:

Back in January of 2009, I raised the concern that Michael Steele was using Blaise Hazelwood to run his campaign for the RNC. The concern related to the willingness and ability of the Republican consultant class to glum on to their preferred RNC Chairman and bilk the GOP of gobs of cash.