Eggcorns and self-promotion

[Jonathan Lighter]

As it is a Scots ballad, there should be no apostrophe in "have."

  JL

"JAMES A. LANDAU Netscape. Just the Net You Need." <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "JAMES A. LANDAU Netscape. Just the Net You Need."

Subject: Re: Eggcorns and self-promotion
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original message:

Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:31:09 -0400
From: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: Eggcorns and self-promotion
On 8/14/07, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>
> On Aug 14, 2007, at 2:37 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
> > My favorite in music is: "It's a hard egg. Nuthin' but a hard
> > egg." (for "heart ache")
>
> from what i can tell from googling, this would be bonnie tyler's song
> "Heartache" *mis-heard* as "hard egg". that is, it's a mondegreen,
> not really an eggcorn. it would be a puzzling eggcorn, since it's
> hard to imagine how anyone could think that "hard egg" makes sense in
> a way that "heartache" does not.
> some eggcorns surely originate in mis-hearings, but their users think
> they make sense.
To be fair, Mark Peters' Babble article on eggcorns includes a mondegreen ("You're a grand old
flag, you're a high-fivin' flag"), so it would be easy for a non-initiate to miss the distinction.

Mr. Zimmer

Now you've got me confused. Are you saying that an eggcorn has to make sense (just not the
sense that the original phrase did)? If so, then a mondegreen is an eggcorn if it makes sense?
Help!

"They 'ave killed the Earl of Morey
And Lady Mondegreen"

makes sense. Does that mean it is an acorn as well as the eponym for mondegreens?
Help!

James A. Landau
test engineer
Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA

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