Eggcorn: *light sabre* > 'light saver'

[Damien Hall]

When I was at school I used to think that the swords of light in the *Star Wars*
films, light sabres, were actually called 'light savers'.  Google tells me I'm
not alone:  this afternoon a search on

"light saver" "star wars"

yields 1,410 ghits.  It strikes me now that this qualifies as an eggcorn:
there's the phonetic element in the similarity of the realisations, and the
semantic one in that (presumably, for a child) the weapon 'saves' light an
emits it as a beam when someone needs striking down.

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania

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