eggcorn

[Jonathan Lighter]

A fellow doctoral candidate in English was stumped by a crossword clue something like "urge (on)," three-letters ending in "g."  "Egg" had the advantage of fitting as well as of filling out an intersecting word.

But she rejected it because she knew the correct spelling was "aig."

I alone am escaped to tell thee.

JL

"Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Dennis R. Preston"

Subject: Re: eggcorn
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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