Eggcorn: momento

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Oct 12 02:05:34 UTC 2008


Good point. I'd bet that there are many, many people who don't even
know that there's a word, "memento," and when they hear it or see it,
think that it's an error for "momento."

Memento, homo, that you read it here, first.

-Wilson

On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Laurence Horn <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: Eggcorn: momento
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5:48 PM -0700 10/11/08, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>Momento itself gets 322 million supposed hits, a lot of which are
>>doubtless for the movie. It's "corporate momentos" (the item I
>>happened to be looking up) that gets 90. BB
>
> Perhaps worth noting that the movie (and quite a movie it was) is
> "Memento".  Most of the albums, bands, etc. with this name use the
> traditional spelling as well.  On the other hand, there is an album
> by a Portuguese musician named Pedro Abrunhosa ("known for always
> wearing sunglasses in public") which is in fact "Momento".  But I
> assume this is like the Italian "(uno) momento", corresponding to
> 'moment', not 'memento'.  In fact, I wonder how many of the (now)
> 281,000,000 hits actually correspond to the Romance language terms
> for 'moment' rather than respellings of "memento".
>
> LH
>
>>On Oct 11, 2008, at 5:09 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>-----------------------
>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>>Subject:      Re: Eggcorn: momento
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>Only *ninety*?! "Momento" is surely two days older than water!
>>>
>>>-Wilson
>>>
>>>On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>-----------------------
>>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
>>>>Subject:      Eggcorn: momento
>>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>For memento, perhaps because you remember the moment.
>>>>
>>>>"corporate momentos" gets 90 hits on Google. BB
>>>>
>>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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-----
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