Eggcorn: own goal >> home goal

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:55 PM +0000 2/13/09, Damien Hall wrote:
>On Feb 13 2009, Mark Mandel wrote:
>
>>I always found "own goal" obscure, not having grown up with sports in
>>which the term is used. (NB, Damien's UK "football" is Americans'
>>"soccer".) And I can't think of any other uses of the pronominal
>>adjective (what DO you call it?) "own" without a possessive, whether in
>>"DET[non-pronom] own N" or any other construction. AFAICT, "own goal" is
>>an idiosyncratic construction.
>
>Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other such constructions
>either. Of course it's easy to see where it came from: a phrase was needed
>for the phenomenon of scoring against one's team, and 'home goal', though
>it would be logical in the way Mark describes below, is blocked by the fact
>that it already has another meaning in the sport: a goal scored at one's
>team's home ground, as opposed to an 'away goal', scored when playing away
>from home. The choice of 'own goal' for the phenomenon presumably then
>comes from a shortening and generalisation of sentences like "S/he's scored
>in his/her own goal", making an NP out of it for ease of communication?
>
Just checking to see what other languages do, I came across these
renderings, whose accuracy I can't vouch for.

SPANISH



FRENCH
marquer

These are pretty inelegant, but I do like "autogoal".  The
possibility for confusion (e.g. with a form of soccer played in or by
cars) seems less likely to arise than with "home goal".

Self-goal? naaah
Suigoal?  well, maybe

LH

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