eggcorn

Tue May 17 06:16:11 UTC 2005

Rex, Pres. Eisenhower always said "nucular," and he was always ridiculed for it.  But historians think he made a decent Prez.  God knows what Lincoln and Jackson sounded like.

Are such features "desirable" ?  Maybe not, but by that criterion French must be pretty revolting, because it's basically a screwed-up version of rustic Latin as imitated by hicks in the Dark Ages.

One reason we highly-trained professionals stress that eggcorns and other, er, innovations "just are" is that there isn't a God-damned thing we can do about them.  If you doubt me, get people to quit using "ain't."

JL "The 24 / 7 Ph.D."

"Rex W. Stocklin" <stocklin at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Rex W. Stocklin"
Subject: Re: eggcorn
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 9:11 PM -0400 5/12/05, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

>Rex, we're going to have to get you up to speed on dialect
>variation! All the shifts you note are common, and they're neither
>good ("proper") nor bad ("egregious"). So, the loss of medial or
>final 'L' is common in some areas (it's "vowelized"); the tensing
>(or laxing, or merging) of vowels before L is common, again in
>different regions; the merging of 'tour' and 'tore' is common in
>Philly and Baltimore (and my student heard it in Cleveland
>recently). Lauer's 'tor' is not "affected," nor is Jagger's 'tour'
>either "correct" or "schooled"; they just ARE. The 'ax'/'ask'
>inversion is common in many English dialects, not just African
>American English. 'For' and 'far' are merged in some areas (esp.
>St. Louis and, at least formerly, in Utah). And Bush, for all his
>faults, pronounces 'nuclear' as many people naturally do, not
>because he WON'T do otherwise. "Enunciation" vs. "dumbing down"
>ain't got nothin' to do with these examples!

Mea culpa! To use a once overheard eggcorn, I've been killholed!
Although to my defense, I meant to write the phrase "numbing down" as
it pertains to "shoot", which I DO think is not a dialect variation
(a la "shee-it"), but an attempt to substitute for the scatological
vulgarity. But what do *I* know? Now 'scuse me while I pick the
barnacles from my flesh.

I must say, as a neophyte, I AM learning a great deal from you guys.
Kinda makes me wish I had actually studied the language arts.

As for the N-word, I am well aware that many linguists, but not all,
accept that it has become established in our language. But is it
welcome? I mean really, there is no second "u" in the damned thing,
so we allow folks to get by with pronouncing it thusly, because they
can't take the time to stop and try to pronounce it correctly? I'm
sorry, I DO feel some verbal laziness here, cultural considerations
notwithstanding. I am trying real hard NOT to be a snob, cuz, if you
knew me, that word would be like antimatter to me. I am just afraid
of seeing the erosion of our vocabulary. Yeah, I know, it's a mighty
BIG vocabulary. It might be personal with me, as I used to say things
like ESculator, disHEveled (long E), ADjetive, gaLAXy, FEERy(instead
of FIery), EUcumenical, sWORD, perJORative, and EByulent. Then
there's CLIToris, which I see in most dictionaries an alternate
pronunciation of cliTORis, which I used to say as a kid (not very
often, mind you, just when the occasion arose), but was routinely
told, mostly by women, that the former was the only true
pronunciation and the other was wrong. Is it that we mispronounce
words enough that the dictionarians feel the need to include the
commonly used words? Pardon my ignorance and perhaps I am arriving at
a realization y'all have grappled with long ago.

The boobs that are passed off as schooled, well-spoken news anchors,
with eggcorn (or worse) on their faces:

- The assessable parking ramp was blocked...
- ...for all intensive purposes...
- The councilman gleamed some knew perspective...
- The church leadership prayed and led to their upmost.
- Citizens, get thee to the liberry! (N.B. - a pervertedly ironic
attempt at being cerebral)
- It was done, all in good conscious.
- ...in his own inhibitable style.
- ...peanuts, caramel and a delicious chewy nugget in the center.
- The thing is, messy political scoundrels upset people a great
deal. (N.B. - very funny, but...)
- She had a brain tumor she feared was malicious. (N.B. - ditto)
- The printers blowed up the picture eight times larger than life-size.
- But her decision making was beyond approach (N.B. - well, I guess...)
- ...above the pale.
- The latest complaint du jour is GERD, gastroesophageal reflex
disease (N.B. - points for the BIG words)
- Signed, respectively yours, the station management.
- The new owner's a world-class restauranteur...
- Pregame commentators made a good assertation...
- Because of her DNR, NO heroic measurements were taken.
- The ill-fated car bounded acrossed the medium... (note: I don't
take issue with "acrossed", an infamous regional slurring)
- (N.B. - I swear this is as real as all these others) Younger
sports fans don't know buttkiss...

and eksetera, and eksetera...;-) Perhaps it is this bad because it is
Indiana and we don't merit the top talent. But, I used to live in Los
Angeles and it was not so hot there either (though I didn't actually
keep score there) and... we did hatch Jane Pauley & David Letterman,
both alums of the local anchor scene, but back from the '60s/'70s.

>From those "lights" of our daily feed to our so-called leaders to the
lowly constant hum of illiterate composers of email, I bewail the
decomposition of the mother tongue. I channel The Vocabula Review's
manifesto, from which is this excerpt:

"That a U.S. presidential candidate can cry "Is our children
learning," an admired basketball star can use the word "conversate,"
a well-known college professor can say "vociferous" when he means
"voracious," and another can scold a student for using the word
"juggernaut" because she believes it means "jigaboo" is disturbing.
The Vocabula Review strives to combat the degradation of our
language."

If Febyoowary, jagwire and simyooler end up as alternate
pronunciations in any dictionary, then there is no Gawd.

Makes me wonder if words like catsup and coupon...ahhhh, fuckit.
Maybe I'll go submerse my undereducated cranky ass in some Farsi.

Toodles and shalom,
Lexy Wrecksy
Fishers, IN

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