things that are not eggcorns

[Wilson Gray]

Around the end of WWII, IIRC, there appeared a funnybook entitled "The
Grim Reaper." At that time, I was familiar with the word "reaper," but
not with the word, "grim." So, I decided that "grim" was a mistake for
"grime." But how would one reap grime? That didn't make sense. After a
bit more thought, the solution to this puzzle became obvious, The hero
was "The CRIME Reaper"! He used his scythe to scoff up criminals. So,
for a long time, i.e. ca. two years. I was under the impression that
there was a funnybook hero named "The Crime Reaper." Indeed, by
extension, any representation of the Grim Reaper was interpreted by me
as being one of the Crime Reaper. I'll leave it to others to decide
whether this was a real eggcorn.

-Wilson

On 8/9/07, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject:      Re: things that are not eggcorns
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Can an eggcorn be created on purpose? John D. MacDonald's book, "The Green
> Ripper", one of the Travis McGee series, gets it title from a (fictional)
> child's misunderstanding of the Grim Reaper. The kid lives in fear that the
> Green Ripper will someday come to get him. It may well be that MacDonald
> actually knew of a real-life instance of this and then used it for the story
> but dunno. So: Does an eggcorn have to be an accident in order to an
> eggcorn?
> DAD
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Arnold M. Zwicky
> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 12:53 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: things that are not eggcorns
>
> on Language Log, with mentions of ADS-L and ADS-Lers:
>
>    AZ, 8/8/07: Pails and flounders:
>    http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004805.html
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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