What are some good “eggcorns” you’ve heard or been victim to?
Asked by
ipso (
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June 19th, 2010
A friend at work said “f’ing egg” a few times before we challenged him on it. He had been misusing that for f’ing A his whole life.
Quite the literal eggcorn example. He was maybe 40yo.
Funny stuff.
As a kid I could not understand for the life of me what the Ohio Players were saying, so I would sing Staring Kojack
I’m not a huge fan of Al Pacino (his BIG speeches in the move Heat (1995) pretty much say it all) but in the movie Donnie Brasco (1997) his character was given some really great eggcorns, if you pay attention. The one I remember is “Pull the wood over my eyes.”
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There’s a song that goes, “Booty booty booty booty rockin’ everywhere”
My sister would sing, “booty booty booty booty rockets everywhere”
“I represent that remark”. I think that was an Archie Bunker-ism, along with “groinacologist”.
My brother thought the line in the Creedance Clearwater Revivial song was, “There’s a bathroom on the right” instead of “There’s a bad moon on the rise.”
When I was in grade school…..my best friend and I sat around a turntable for hours playing “Norweigan Wood” by the Beatles. We could not figure out one lyric…we finally settled on…“whispered devone” which makes absolutely no sense at all, but we thought, “Maybe it’s something _British!”
Years later…I finally saw the sheet music…it was: “this bird has flown”...which is the subtitle to the song.
Yes, this was before could Google a lyric.
I still laugh thinking about our serious quest for that silly lyric…and how many times we played that song over and over and over!
I still use “play it by ear” and “play it by year” in free variation. I was probably 18 or 19 before I figured out that ‘ear’ is the correct one.
Jeez. I just did it here. “Chicken Popped Pie”.
My son called the ignorant lady who filled in for his first grade teacher a subastute teacher, he was correct.
My son thought second grade was hard becasue you had to study all those “two-pound” words!
Oh wait…another quick one…my daughter was three or four…and she asked me, “Mommy…what is mental-pause?” (menopause)
Weird…I’ve never heard the term “eggcom” before until this post, and I just ran across another word for the same thing this morning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
“Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs” devotes a chapter to ‘Songs That People Get Wrong”. The whole book is hilarious.
This is going to be one post interesting post to follow.
I thought “all the rage” was “all the rave”. I still see the latter used, however.
When I was little, I always thought the saying “is the coast clear?” was “is the ghost
clear?
I thought secret agent man was secret asian man.
Ah yes, good old Mondegreens. I love them and their first cousins, Malapropisms.
The first term refers to frequently mis-heard phrases while the second applies to mis-spoken phrases.
Many kids go to Sunday school and learn a new song about a weird animal called “Gladly, the cross-eyed Bear”
And at Christmas time they form a mental image of a Nativity scene including Mary, Joseph, the animals and a portly gentleman called Round John Virgin.
There used to be a site devoted solely to listing frequently mis-heard song lyrics. I’ll see if I can hunt it up.
Richard Lederer has a whole section devoted to Mondegreens on his site which you may enjoy.
www.verbivore.com
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