Eggcorn?

[Wilson Gray]

The phrase was heard on the Maury Povich Show. A guest stated that she
didn't know whether she should buy into her boyfriend's line - "I love you
so much that I want you to have my baby" - lest she _be putting all [her]
eggs in the wrong basket_. She may have been punning on the fact that, as a
woman, she literally does have eggs, but, in the words of Homey the Clown,
"I don't think so."

-Wilson


On 11/23/05, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Eggcorn?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 6:28 AM -0800 11/23/05, James Smith wrote:
> >Without the context of this statement, it's hard to
> >tell, but it may be a very deliberate play on the well
> >known idiom.  Putting all one's eggs in the WRONG
> >basket adds a whole 'nother aspect.
> >
> >
>
> Just to register one more tally for Wilson's analysis--"put all
> (one's) eggs in the same basket" doesn't strike me as all that
> unlikely, although it's somewhat rarer than "...in one basket".
> unless I missed it, nobody's registered the raw google count here, so
> I will:
>
> 519,000 for "eggs in one basket"
>    10,700 for "eggs in the same basket"
>         423 for "eggs in the wrong basket"
>
> In each case, the first bunch of hits all seem to invoke or play on
> the proverb(s).
>
> Larry
>