"The new BBC boss has hired consultants to help him reduce waste and slash the number of managers at the corporation. He is understood to have spent weeks hold up in an office looking at how to cut unnecessary waste and bureaucracy." Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208748/BBC-executives-marry-affairs-Departing-broadcasting-chief-reveals-culture-London-based-staff.html#ixzz27ZeoVAd5 = hold up vs. holed up. >>>> 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. Same here. I think regular contributors to this thread know that the topic of "eggcorns" has evolved/ expanded into "other common grammatical errors". This can be a rare case of the more specific including the more general, rather than the more common case of the more general including the more specific!
Did Johnny Depp Help Himself with His Testimony? | Johnny Depp / Amber Heard Case Analysis Michelle Rezende 2 days ago I’ve had a relationship like that. In the beginning it was wonderful, little time latter he started provoking me all the time. I’m a quiet person and I thrive alone. He would never leave me alone, I should never have alone time, I couldn’t play little games on my phone to distract myself, he would take my phone and play it “for me” in front of me in a passive aggressive way. He would berate me on the simplest things from the moment I woke up to the time to sleep, and I noticed he wanted me to follow his time, his time to sleep, his time to wake up, and he would be so aggressive trying to make me feel lazy that I would sleep 4 hours a day to “fulfill all my duties”. After some years I was sleep deprived, always tired, jumpy to his every berating talk to me and having memory loss and absurdly depressed, having panic and anxiety attacks. If we went to friends gatherings he would start provoking me before going out, so I would blow up at the event from what he said and I was put like the crazy one. I stayed for more than 5 years, waiting for the wonderful person I met at the beguining to come back, then it donged on me that that person never existed. Now I see he doesn’t self regulate, he is a huge narcissist who thought I was his perpetual punching bag… and it might not be big, once he gave me a 45 min lecture on how to close the blinds properly in order to not damage our property. It was humiliating and so demeaning… things like that throughout the years break a person. And he is now happy with a new punching bag and a kid, and I’m free. Show less = donged on me vs. dawned on me
From a review of a product on another forum: "peaked" for "piqued" And then there's that mainstay of the internet, "Walla!" (for "Voila!").
I saw this in a movie review of "Barbie" in today's paper. Not sure if this is really an eggcorn, but I got a chuckle out of it" "Warner Bros. released a first-look image of Margot Robbie starring as the titular Mattel doll in 'Barbie'..." I'm sorry, but I am a dirty old man.
"It's a good time to pace yourself and consider practical angles to your endeavors. Filling your duties also makes sense as it will free you up for more engaging activities later." filling your duties vs. fulfilling your duties
I heard this on a newscast recently: "That could be done, but it would be a hard road to hoe." BTW, I found a whole section on eggcorns in I book I found at a book sale. The book is called Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon our Language, by Richard Lederer, and the section is titled "Modern Day Malapropisms." So if you like this sort of thing, there's your book.
Which reminds me of the great Herb Caen's comment about how a Salvation Army Santa Claus was seen setting up his tripod and donation kettle and giving the traditional Santa laugh at a certain intersection: "It isn't the first time there have been three 'hos' at that street corner."
I had to look up the definition. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘enjoy’ them. I suppose to most people use of an eggcorn would be the sign of an uneducated person.
Or at least a person who is so unfamiliar with the phrase that he or she has to try to make sense of it using their own experience. If you've never ridden a horse, "free rein" would't make sense to you, so you interpret it as "free reign" because that interpretation seems to make sense in the context. If you've never used a hoe on a field planted in rows (and most people haven't), then "a hard road to hoe" seems as likely an interpretation as any. So the speaker isn't suffering from a lack of education so much as a lack of experience. There's a story I heard about some children at a church picnic who were singing after the meal. The hymn was "Weak and Sinful Though We Be." One child that that the lyrics were "We Can Sing, Full Though We Be." It certainly made sense to the child, for whom the concept of sin was still fairly nebulous.
It's also the fact that people don't read much anymore. They've heard some of these phrases, but never seen them written (because who reads books anymore?) They know how they sound, but not how they're spelled. I often have the opposite problem. I've read many words and phrases that I've never heard in speech, so don't know how they're pronounced. I'm sure I mentioned the time in college speech class when I pronounced deity so it rhymed with tidy (die-dee—sounds like a nickname for diapers) and sieve so it rhymed with grieve. Seeve. Tell ya what—I'll never make those particular mistakes again!!
Yeah, it's like, if you've never seen the film, you might think the phrase Free Willy refers to... never mind.
I’m never sure if it’s ‘tow path‘ or ‘toe path’. Both make sense in their own way. I suppose that’s an eggcorn. Tow the line? Toe the line?
"Tow path" is correct. The tow path is the path that ran alongside inland canals for the horses or mules that were used to drag the barges up and down the canal. On the other hand, "toe the line" is correct for indicating being READY! From track, when runners line up with their toes on (but not across) the starting line.
Yep. I had a friend whose dad owned a towtruck company and he thought it was tow the line. Which almost makes sense, since there is such a thing as a towline—however you don't really tow the line so much as you tow a wrecked car with it, in the same way you don't cut the knife, you cut things with it.
I'm surprised it doesn't seem to have been mentioned, but it doesn't come up in a search. Another Internetism: "Low and behold ..."
Not only "hold up." Did anyone report the erstwhile BBC boss for plotting to commit mayhem on his employees?
I was with my dad at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, New York. He asked one of the docents an interesting question: since there was usually only one tow-path, what happened when two barges met coming from opposite directions? The answer: the barge on the opposite side of the canal from the tow pat drops its tow rope to allow the near-side barge to pass. It's one of those things that people never think about now, but that was part of the canal's working life.
Possibly a spelling mistake rather than a true eggcorn, but this one from an American website quoting a British comedy grated on my nerves: "You, you blue burke!" Burke is a surname. The insult (meaning idiot, for any non brits who aren't familiar with it) is berk.
