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

[Jonathan Lighter]

When I was a  child I believed for a long time that the expression was "Prince of Whales."

But I assumed it was a mysterious figure of speech (like calling baby flowers "bulbs") and had nothing to do with actual whales.

Now I'm a Ph.D.

Only in America....

JL

Roger Shuy <rshuy at MONTANA.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Roger Shuy
Subject: Re: mints pie? axe of God? religious tracks? Prints of Wales?
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on 5/7/05 2:30 PM, Laurence Horn at laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Laurence Horn
> Subject: Re: mints pie? axe of God? religious tracks? Prints of Wales?
>
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>
> At 2:01 PM -0400 5/7/05, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>> 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.
>
> cf. "A good doctor always has a lot of patience."
>
> Larry
>
I wonder if any other old guy like me had the same example used when a
student in phonetics class. My teacher taught us that there was a big
differnce in juncture between "hot mince pie" and "hot mint spy."
(stretching things quite a bit to visualize a sweaty spy hiding behind the
bushes and watching the US Mint). Frankly, I wasn't very good at hearing
it.
roger


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