Eggcorn: own goal >> home goal

[Mark Mandel]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> OED3 has this s.v. "own":
>
> ---
> 2. a. Without preceding possessive. Latterly usu. with indefinite
> article, or in pl.
> In later use chiefly used in relation to terms of kinship, to
> distinguish a close blood relationship from some other kind, as _an
> own brother_ = a full brother as opposed to a half-brother or
> brother-in-law, etc. _own cousin_ n. a first cousin.
> ---

OED Online under this sense has just 4 cites in the past 100 years,
none of which IMHO clearly bear on this usage:

1909 H. BELLOC Marie Antoinette i. 7 This new and strange force -- an
own child of the Reform.
1927 G. L. WILSON Waheenee (1981) i. 9, I do not think my mother's
sisters could have been kinder to me if I had been an own daughter.
1991 Struct. Change & Econ. Dynamics 2 139 Ct is conditional
covariance between income, yt+1, from the asset and 'own' income,
wi,t+1.
2003 Sunday Times (Johannesburg) (Electronic ed.) 16 Mar., Can you
offer an own contribution of at least 10% of the financial
requirements of the business?

The first two are nothing like current, and the last two smack of
financial jargon such as you mention in your next para. There's recent
usage in South Africa as well as a special sense or two there, but
nothing here for the UK.

> There's also a separate entry for "own brand" = "A brand applied by a
> retailer to products which have been manufactured, packaged, etc.,
> specifically to be sold by that retailer; a product which carries such
> a brand." And I see that "own share" is in UK financial usage, as in
> the book title _Company Acquisition of Own Shares_:
> http://books.google.com/books?id=R4aA-Yvw6ysC

m a m

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