The teacher asked the class to come up with a sentence including the word contagious.Johnny shoots his hand up "Our neighbour's painting his fence with a 1 inch brush and my dad says it's going to take the contagious"
I had a letter about eggcorns published in the Guardian several years ago. Hmph.
I think it was only after the TV series came out that I realised the phrase was not 'splitting image'. Frankly, neither 'splitting', spitting nor 'spit and image' carry any intrinsic meaning that I can discern, and I think it's that lack of 'logic' in the phrases that might be one reason for eggcorns. Though eggcorn itself is a funny one.
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.
Synchronicity!One of Boss Caine's (York's answer to Springsteen) lyrics leapt out at me the other day, and now I know what to call it. The lyric was "poking his head above the pulpit".
There should be an adjective pre-Madonnaite (pre-Madonnan?) referring to a return to the supposed golden period in popular music before Madonna, along the lines of pre-Raphaelite.
Quote from: Cudzoziemiec on 17 September, 2014, 10:38:45 amThere should be an adjective pre-Madonnaite (pre-Madonnan?) referring to a return to the supposed golden period in popular music before Madonna, along the lines of pre-Raphaelite.That's Sweet!
potato from out of space
Talking of eggcorns and suchlike. Part of headline from local rag:Quotepotato from out of space
Shew is an archaic form of show isn't it?Past is shewn/shown, I thought.
Shew is not the past tense of show. (I ought to let this one pass, as it's dialect, but I'm still cringing).
Do you mean spelling or pronunciation? Because the old 'shew' didn't represent a different pronunciation, at least not in the last couple of hundred years. Shew was pronounced like blow or grow, not blew or grew. Shew/shewn sounded like sew/sewn.