Eggcorns and self-promotion

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 8/14/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> On Aug 14, 2007, at 2:37 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>
> > My favorite in music is: "It's a hard egg.  Nuthin' but a hard
> > egg."  (for "heart ache")
>
> from what i can tell from googling, this would be bonnie tyler's song
> "Heartache" *mis-heard* as "hard egg".  that is, it's a mondegreen,
> not really an eggcorn.  it would be a puzzling eggcorn, since it's
> hard to imagine how anyone could think that "hard egg" makes sense in
> a way that "heartache" does not.
>
> some eggcorns surely originate in mis-hearings, but their users think
> they make sense.

To be fair, Mark Peters' Babble article on eggcorns includes a
mondegreen ("You're a grand old flag, you're a high-fivin' flag"), so
it would be easy for a non-initiate to miss the distinction.


--Ben Zimmer

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