eggcorn

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 13 May 2005 10:04:32 -0700, Arnold M. Zwicky
<zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:

>On May 13, 2005, at 9:49 AM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>> "eyg-corn"--of course!  I didn't get in on the earliest exchanges on
>> eggcorns, but was this derivation from tensed /E/ mentioned?
>
>yes, indeed.

Mentioned by Mark Liberman as early as Sep. 23, 2003:

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http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000018.html
Note, by the way, that the author of this mis-hearing may be a speaker of
the dialect in which "beg" has the same vowel as the first syllable of
"bagel". For these folks, "egg corn" and "acorn" are really homonyms, if
the first is not spoken so as to artificially separate the words.
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--Ben Zimmer