OED definition of eggcorn is wrong

[Victor Steinbok]

  My amateur status gives me little authority to comment on the
subject--especially when competing with people who coined the term to
begin with to whom I usually defer on all matters of languange. But
should this be "make some sense to the SPEAKER" (writer, etc.), not just
"make some sense" in a vacuum? Specifically, it may not make sense to
the reader, listener, interpreter, etc. Of course, this raises a natural
objection--how do we know whether it made sense to the speaker? More
often than not he is not around to explain himself. I suppose, this is
where we have to get out our divining rods and become very charitable in
interpretation. Otherwise, we'd have fights over every instance--hell,
if I don't think an "eggcorn" has any relation to either egg or corn,
then it must logically follow that "eggcorn" is not an eggcorn.

I believe, it would be fair to /assume/, on the part of the linguistic
interpreter, that, in most instances, if there is some morphological
resemblance between a malaprop and some other word (e.g., "eggcorn"--or
should I say "radical resemblance"?), then the formation is (in some
stochastic sense) an eggcorn. In legal terms, I would call it a
rebuttable presumption. Of course, this might be hard to put in a
concise definition--which is why i suggest to defer to the speaker for
making sense.

     VS-)

On 9/16/2010 12:36 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>   On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Mark Peters wrote:
>> The key element of an eggcorn is that it's a *logical* mistake--it has to make
>> sense. That's what distinguishes it from a malapropism or mondegreen. When my
>> mom calls carpal tunnel syndrome "carnal tunnel-vision syndrome," that's no
>> eggcorn, because it makes no sense (it is awesome, though).
>>
>> But the OED's definition (new this week) leaves this out: "An alteration of a
>> word or phrase through the mishearing or  reinterpretation of one or more of
>> its elements as a similar-sounding  word."
>>
>> Arggh! That's a gigantic omission, isn't it? Or did I just put too much crack
>> on my corn flakes this morning? Maybe " reinterpretation" is supposed to
>> cover the logic part, but I don't know...
>>
>> Ben, Arnold, others, what do you think?
> I'm with Mark on this one -- see my Language Log post:
>
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2633
>
> --bgz

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