possible eggcorn

[Wilson Gray]

I've never had a problem with "jewel-like," but there is a local voice-over
guy whom I always annoyingly hear as shilling for "[Some-Name-Or-Other]
Jewry," even though I know that he's
saying "jewelry," given that it's spelled out on the TV screen.

-Wilson

On 3/15/06, 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:      possible eggcorn
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The following observation was contributed by Karen Baumer, one of our
> former grad students who now works at H5, a software group in the
> Silicon Valley.  The name of her source has been partially concealed
> to preserve her anonymity.  I don't know if it counts as a true
> eggcorn.  No google hits for "Jew-like intensity", but we could start
> (or, based on the below, continue) a craze...
>
> LH
>
> --- begin forwarded text
>
> I had a bunch of people visiting last weekend, including my friend Laura
> Xberg from NYC. She mentioned that there is a L'Oreal hair color
> commercial right now where they extol the colors' "jewel-like intensity."
> However, she always hears it as "Jew-like intensity," even now that
> she's figured out what they are actually saying. So naturally throughout
> the weekend we ended up commenting on the Jew-like intensity of
> various objects and people (including Laura herself).
>
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