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

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:08 PM -0400 5/7/05, Alice Faber wrote:
>RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>In a message dated 5/7/05 1:37:11 PM, zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU writes:
>>
>>
>>>On May 7, 2005, at 10:29 AM, Ron Butters wrote:
>>>
>>>>In a message dated 5/7/05 12:13:51 PM, zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
>>>>writes:
>>>>
>>>>>http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/
>>>>
>>>>A woderful website -- but where is "it is a doggy dog world"
>>>
>>>in the works.  i have dozens of items to enter, and Chris Waigl has
>>>even more.  maybe we can get Ben Zimmer to do this one...
>>>
>>>arnold
>>>
>>
>>
>>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.
>
>I've seen so many instances of "getting untracked" where my Sprachgefühl
>tells me "getting on track" should be used that I'm no longer sure what
>the original expression is. I've seen elaborate etymologies of "getting
>untracked" that seem too contrived to be correct. But, of course, I
>haven't cared enough to research it.

This is one we've discussed here before.  It seems clear (to me,
anyway) that as Alice surmises "(can't) get untracked" in a sports
context (for a player/team that's trying to get out of a slump) is a
reanalysis of "(can't) get on track", where the track is now a rut
that one wants to be OFF or out of, instead of the original sense of
being ON track as a Good Thing for trains and such.  This can lead to
the remarkable incongruity in contexts like that of the headline
found at http://www.detnews.com/2003/metro/0306/18/a02-196486.htm
(gratia Jill Beckman).

Larry