this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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Explain Like I'm Five
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Yes! Eggcorns is by far the superior term for “alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements, creating a new phrase having a different meaning from the original but which still makes sense and is plausible when used in the same context.”
Boneappletea is also an excellent term for a similar thing, where the "new" word or phrase makes no sense and is not plausible when used in the same context.
There will certainly be reasonable disagreements about which description is more apt in a given situation. One that comes to mind is Joey Tribbiani's use and explanation of "a moo point."
Yeah, I’m just partial to eggcorn (term and concept).
What's the origin of the term eggcorn? A brief scan of the link didn't answer this for me. Is eggcorn itself an eggcorn?
It is!
What is it an eggcorn of? Acorn? And what's the origin?
Yes, acorn.
This linguistics blog post is the origin: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000018.html
Oh awesome and very interesting thank you!