eggcorn: "raise cackles"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Jun 4 17:58:17 UTC 2009


At 1:40 PM -0400 6/4/09, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  And the next step is to process these "cackles" as an all-purpose
>>  emotive response gauge.  We can already attest "warm the cackles (of
>>  one's heart)":
>[snip]
>
>Ah, that would help explain this example:
>
>>>---
>  >>http://www.quickstopentertainment.com/2005/01/28/trailer-park-happy-birthday-to-me/
>>>It's about Deep Throat so you can be sure it's, at the very least,
>>>going to raise some cackles in the hearts of bible belters somewhere
>>>in this great land.
>>>---

I saw that one, but concluded it was more likely to be a "hackle"
cackle like yours than a "cockle" cackle like mine, especially with
"raise" rather than "warm" as the verb.  But I suppose it depends on
what your presuppositions are concerning the attitude of Blble
Belters toward "Deep Throat"....

LH

>So that's both an idiom blend and a lexical blend ("hackles" +
>"cockles" = "cackles").
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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