mints pie? axe of God? religious tracks? Prints of Wales?

[Laurence Horn]

>on 5/7/05 2:30 PM, Laurence Horn at laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: mints pie? axe of God? religious tracks? Prints of Wales?
>>
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>>  At 2:01 PM -0400 5/7/05, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>>  I searched on Google for "mints pie" and found that John Lennon
>>>(?) once used
>>>  this spelling for a Christmas pie, but I'm not sure if he was
>>>making a pun or
>>>  not. I'm interested in any eggcorns that use mints/mince, prints/prince,
>>>  acts/axe, tracks/tracts, etc. There are several commerical names
>>>that use the
>>>  prints/prince puns, but these of course are not eggcorns.
>>
>>  cf. "A good doctor always has a lot of patience."
>>
>>  Larry
>>
>I  wonder if any other old guy like me had the same example used when a
>student in phonetics class. My teacher taught us that there was a big
>differnce in juncture between "hot mince pie" and "hot mint spy."
>(stretching things quite a bit to visualize a sweaty spy hiding behind the
>bushes and watching the US Mint).  Frankly, I wasn't very good at hearing
>it.
>roger

Nice, although not quite as memorable as Bloomfield's minimal pair
for juncture, "catch it" vs. "cat shit".  I also recall (although not
the source) "night rate", "nigh trait", and "Nye trait", although
maybe I'm misremembering because I don't see now how the latter two
were supposed to contrast, and in any case not as...catchy as
Bloomfield's example.

Larry