eggcorn: "raise cackles"

Alison Murie sagehen7470 at ATT.NET
Thu Jun 4 19:00:14 UTC 2009


On Jun 4, 2009, at 1:58 PM, Laurence Horn 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: "raise cackles"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 1:40 PM -0400 6/4/09, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Laurence Horn
>> <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> And the next step is to process these "cackles" as an all-purpose
>>> emotive response gauge.  We can already attest "warm the cackles (of
>>> one's heart)":
>> [snip]
>>
>> Ah, that would help explain this example:
>>
>>>> ---
>>>> http://www.quickstopentertainment.com/2005/01/28/trailer-park-happy-birthday-to-me/
>>>> It's about Deep Throat so you can be sure it's, at the very least,
>>>> going to raise some cackles in the hearts of bible belters
>>>> somewhere
>>>> in this great land.
>>>> ---
>
> I saw that one, but concluded it was more likely to be a "hackle"
> cackle like yours than a "cockle" cackle like mine, especially with
> "raise" rather than "warm" as the verb.  But I suppose it depends on
> what your presuppositions are concerning the attitude of Blble
> Belters toward "Deep Throat"....
>
> LH
>
>> So that's both an idiom blend and a lexical blend ("hackles" +
>> "cockles" = "cackles").
>>
>>
>> --Ben Zimmer
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~
I wonder what "cackles"-speakers imagine cackles to look like!
AM

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