Definitions For Eggcorn

Noun

{{examples, examples= deep-seeded instead of deep-seated deformation of character instead of defamation of character for all intensive purposes instead of for all intents and purposes free reign instead of free rein old timer's disease instead of alzheimer's disease on tender hooks instead of on tenterhooks}} EGGCORN (plural EGGCORNs) (linguistics) An idiosyncratic but semantically motivated substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound identical, or nearly so, at least in the dialect the speaker uses. from 2003

Etymology

Suggested by British-American linguist {{w, Geoffrey K. Pullum}} (born 1945) following a discussion on the {{w, Language Log}} website on September 23, 2003 by American linguist {{w, Mark Liberman}} about a woman who had long believed the word acorn to be , egg corn.{{cite-web, author=Mark Liberman, authorlink=Mark Liberman, title=Egg corns: folk etymology, malapropism, mondegreen, ???, url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000018.html, archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325050142/http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000018.html, archivedate=25 March 2016, work={{w, Language Log}}, date=23 September 2003, passage=Chris Potts has told me about a case in which a woman wrote “egg corns” for “acorns.” This might be taken to be a folk etymology, like “Jerusalem” for “girasole” in “jerusalem artichoke” (a kind of sunflower). But it might also be treated as something like a (also and ), the kind of “slip of the ear” that is especially common in learning songs and poems. Finally, it's also something like a malapropism, where a word is mistakenly substituted for one of similar sound shape. / Although the example is somewhat like each of these three named categories of errors, it's not exactly any of them. Can anyone suggest a better term?}}