eggcorn

[Dennis R. Preston]

Ahhhh, 'egg' with a tense vowel! When I was very, very young I had
acting ambitions and signed on with the Carriage House players of
Louisville, KY (the precursor to the later very successful Actors
Theater).

In one of my first outings, I played several small bits in The
Scottish play, including one of the murderers of Lady Macduff and her
children. As the scene develops, one the children called me a
"Shag-haired villain," Taking not so well to this, the murderer
responds "What you egg.' I did this in my first rehearsal with a
fully-blown native /eg/ (certainly even more diphthongized than that
phonemic representation would suggest).

Although the Carriage House Players consisted of mostly locals, there
was greater consternation with my vowel than if I had actually
dispatched the snot-nosed little brat on the spot.

Happily, no linguistic insecurity has followed me all of these subsequent days.

dInIs

>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.
>
>arnold


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736