old factory < olefactory

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:48 AM -0700 9/16/07, Dave Wilton wrote:
>GILES: He had a specific...olfactory presence.
>
>XANDER: So it's off to the old factory. I hate that place...I'm joking. I
>know what it means. He smelled.

OK, thanks.  I don't really think this particular pun would have been
part of the trajectory that led to the examples I googled up, e.g.

http://www.bootstrap.org/colloquium/session_08/session_08.html
I was fascinated by something I read in a science magazine a while
ago, the old factory system is something that is used to make our
neurons grow the right place when we are forming. It smells its ways
to your fingertips. How do we put our factory nodes into this so that
the neurons will smell their way to the right place?

or
Either that or hippies smell stuff. Unlike her. She's probably coked
out her entire old factory system and would probably not smell the
house burning down,...

I'd guess these are independent reanalyses of "olfactory system"
rather than references to the exchange from Buffy.  Consider also the
"old factory nerve":

http://www.celebrity-link.com/videos9/948.html
Morgan Fairchild plays Satin Chow a glamourous perfume designer who
must seek out her long lost sisters in order to have an old factory
nerve transplant to regain her sense of smell in this spoof of
'disease of the week' TV movies

LH


>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>Laurence Horn
>Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 7:35 AM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: old factory < olefactory
>
>At 7:30 AM -0700 9/16/07, Dave Wilton wrote:
>>"Old factory" = "olfactory" was a joke on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," fifth
>>season, episode "The Replacement" that aired 10 Oct 2000.
>>
>>Some appearances of the eggcorn may be references to this.
>>
>>
>
>Interesting.  Do you (or does Michael Adams) have the context for that joke?
>
>LH
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>>Laurence Horn
>>Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 7:14 AM
>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>Subject: Re: old factory < olefactory
>>
>>At 10:01 AM -0400 9/16/07, David Bergdahl wrote:
>>>I propose that we add "Eggcorn of the Year" to our annual list--and I
>>>nominate this one!
>>>
>>I'll recuse myself from the latter suggestion, but I'd be happy to
>>support the former one--the tricky part would be closing off the
>>nominations.
>>
>>LH
>>
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