https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10128185/Boris-Johnson-jokes-horrified-children-feeding-humans-animals-climate-change-event.html#comments Yamaha lady, Rosshire, United Kingdom, 3 hours ago What a tadoo over nothing.Even the kids took that as a bit of humour.Everyone will be scared to make a joke very soon sick of this woke s#!+. --- Tadoo cf. to-do ... Right up there imo with a "doggy-dog" world (cf. dog-eat-dog) and "rule the day" (rue the day/ seize the day), as Xoic posted above.
I once believed this was the actual saying and was a bit confused about what it meant. I even thought it was the name and lyrics of the Ted Nugent song lol! In fact I believe I discovered the true saying when I first saw the Free-For-All album and the song's actual title. It was one of those 'big click' moments where suddenly portions of your worldview come together and a little irrationality is replaced with actual meaning. Had another big click recently when I discovered Meatloaf actually sang vocals on several of the songs on that album. I did not know that!
I just encountered one that's new to me -- and it took me a few moments before I (think I) figured it out. "Now, I remember you guys enjoying a te ta te with him." ??? Then it occurred to me: could he possibly have meant "tête-à-tête"?
I've never actually seen this one, but I'd like to see it. "He lured the enemy into a trap using a ruse dagger."
hateusernames, Reading, United Kingdom, 2 hours ago I bet you've got the body of a god! She has no curves whatsoever. People like Marilyn Monroe are who you would call curvy. Overweight people are not curvy, no but, to call them 'beach whales' is immature and you need to get over yourself. = beach whale cf. beached whale
'wrestle back control' for 'wrest back control' https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=wrestle+back+control+%2C+wrest+back+control+&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwrestle%20back%20control%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cwrest%20back%20control%3B%2Cc0 the -le suffix in wrestle shows that originally wrestling was thought of as repeated wresting but the root word is now so unfamiliar that people (apparently) think it must be "wrestling" Are wrests part of a wrestle - or is a wrestle made up of its wrests? A philological Royal Rumble.
Watched a video about the dark side of Japan recently. Now, in Japanese, the letters "fu" and "hu" are the same. The syllable is pronounced with a sibilant "h", like you're blowing air through your lips. So the guy was talking about young girls seeking sex on the backstreets, in front of love hotels. He was speaking heavily accented English, and had added his own subtitles so people would understand him. In his subtitles, he talked about h00kers. The subtitles kept calling them f00kers. Makes sense, right?
Bang in the middle / Spang in the middle but which is the eggcorn? Bang seems to be earlier attested, but I'm sure this phrase is the only place I've seen "spang". (A spangle is a little spang.) So I guess the familiar bang might have replaced the archaism. It might be a pre-1800s archaism, which survives in spoken English but is written so rarely that "bang in the middle" turns up in Google Books sooner.
I've heard "spang in the middle" more than "bang in the middle" -- but I've heard "right smack-dab in the middle" more than to other two combined. It may be a regionalizism. They abound.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10627673/A-slice-normal-life-Nazanin-Zaghari-Ratcliffe-makes-pizzas-daughter-Gabriella.html Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for the Thomas Reuters Foundation as a project manager before she was detained at Tehran Airport in 2016 and accused of attempting to overthrow the Iranian Government, a charge she has always rigorously denied. = rigorously denied vs. vigorously denied
What the hell does it even mean to "hope against hope"???!? It's gramatically meaningless and ridiculous. You're not hoping against hope, you're hoping against all probability or possibility or reality.
We should probably have a thread for sayings and phrases that everybody uses that don't mean anything, often through misquotes. I'll offer 'the proof is in the pudding', which makes no sense. The original was 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'.
That's part of what this thread is, though technically it's not whan an eggcorn is (or rather eggcorns are just one particular form of it). It became a sort of catch-all for common grammatical mistakes. Being the thread starter, @somemorningrain could go to the first post, look at Thread Options across the top of the page, and edit the thread title. Nudge nudge. Though it's only thanks to the word Eggcorn that I'm able to keep finding this thread via search when I want to post in it, so I think that should still be included. Maybe something like Eggcorns and other common grammatical errors.
I think it's called "poetry." It's supposed to make gut-sense, not head-sense. But now you've got me wondering where the expression started.
NOOOOOO! Don't change the thread title that has become hallowed by long use. Do you hate tradition? Do you hate the ancestors?
Came across one the other day, some commenter (commentor?) on YouTube, I think, talking about someone keeping a "momento" of an event. Another commenter pointed out it should be "memento," whereupon a third jumped in and said no, "momento" was fine since it was about remembering a moment; moreover it's all right for anyone to change any word around at any time for any reason they wish, that's how language evolves. As one who sits over a keyboard struggling to find the right words to communicate my ideas to other people, I found this a little hard to swallow. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but that's where I bailed.
Well you know, some of the ancestors are pretty cool, some are assholes. The problem is that people don't understand this thread is for a lot more than just technical Eggcorns—it's expanded to include all manner of wrong phrases and terms that have come into common usage. The title doesn't indicate that, and most people don't know it, so they don't post here with those. Would you rather see a new thread created for those common mistakes? Personally I say let's keep this one going! But it seems only a very small group of us are supplying life support. If people understood the greater context of the thread I think it would become much more active. And sometimes you gotta make the ancestors roll over in their graves. They need the exercise!
I just heard one on TV from an honourable Member of Parliament. "The prime minister should know that the gig (sic) is up" - the "jig" is up.
